BoardSnap is an iOS app that reads whiteboard photos and produces clean summaries and action items in about ten seconds. This UX research plan template structures a research study — from research question to analysis plan — on a whiteboard before you recruit a single participant or write a single question.
Use this template before any user research study: usability tests, user interviews, diary studies, survey design, or concept testing. The planning board is the foundation — research without a plan produces data, not insight.
Budget 45–60 minutes for the planning session. Bring the PM, the designer who will use the findings, and whoever will run the research. Getting alignment on the research question before fieldwork is the highest-leverage activity in any study.
Write the two to three specific questions this study will answer. Research questions are not the same as interview questions — they're the knowledge gaps you're trying to close. 'Do users understand the onboarding flow?' is a research question. 'Walk me through what you'd do first on this screen' is an interview question.
Write the research method you'll use and why it's right for this question. Usability testing answers 'can users do X?' Interviews answer 'why do users do X?' Surveys answer 'how many users do X?' Match the method to the research question — not to the team's preferred method.
Write the criteria for research participants: role, company size, product experience level, and any specific behavioral or demographic criteria. Write the number of participants. Five to eight is standard for usability testing. Twelve to twenty for interviews if you need to reach saturation.
Recruitment period, fieldwork dates, analysis period, and output delivery date. Write each phase with a start and end date. Research studies that don't have a delivery date often don't ship findings — the date creates urgency.
How will you analyze what you collect? Note-taking rubric, affinity mapping, thematic analysis? Write the analysis approach. Then write the output format: research report, insight cards, opportunity areas, or direct design recommendations. Different stakeholders need different output formats — agree on this before fieldwork.
Ask the PM and designer: 'What decision will this research inform?' The research questions should be the questions that, if answered, allow that decision to be made confidently. If the answers won't change any decisions, the study shouldn't happen.
Write each research question and then ask: 'What kind of data would answer this?' Behavioral data (observation) answers different questions than attitudinal data (what people say). Most teams default to interviews — challenge that default.
Write the inclusion criteria first, then the exclusion criteria. A too-broad participant profile produces heterogeneous data that's hard to interpret. A too-narrow profile produces findings that don't generalize. Write both and discuss the tradeoff.
Write the date the findings need to be ready. Then: how many days do you need for analysis? For fieldwork? For recruitment? Work backward to today. That's your research timeline.
Write what you'll deliver at the end: a report, a presentation, insight cards, or a Notion doc. Get agreement now. The format shapes the analysis — if you're making a deck, you organize findings differently than if you're making insight cards.
BoardSnap reads all five sections — research questions, method, participants, timeline, analysis and output. The output is a structured research brief ready to share with stakeholders and use as the study spec.
Research plans written in docs get written by one person and reviewed by nobody. Research plans written on a whiteboard with the full team in the room get challenged — the PM questions the method, the designer questions the participant criteria, and the researcher questions the timeline. The plan that survives those challenges is the one worth running.
BoardSnap captures the challenged-and-improved plan before the room disperses. The research brief is ready to share with the rest of the team.
Two to three is the practical limit for most studies. More than three and you're running too broad a study — the findings from question 4 will arrive too late to inform the decisions that question 1 was supposed to support. Better to run a focused two-question study and get fast, clear answers than a sprawling study that takes six weeks and produces findings nobody acts on.
For usability testing: five is the classic answer (Jakob Nielsen's research suggests five users find ~85% of usability issues). For qualitative interviews: 8–12 typically reaches thematic saturation. For quantitative surveys: sample size depends on confidence interval and population size — use a sample size calculator.
Yes. After fieldwork, use BoardSnap to capture affinity mapping sessions on a whiteboard — write your observations on sticky notes, cluster them on the board, and snap the clusters. BoardSnap reads the text on the sticky notes and produces a summary of the themes by cluster.
The free tier includes one project and 30 boards. Pro is $9.99/month or $69.99/year for unlimited boards and AI chat on every board you snap — including analysis boards.
No exporting, no transcription. Snap the board, get the action plan.