The decisions from user research

Nadyne Richmond makes a great point about keeping decision-making in focus when planning, conducting, and evaluating user research:

Defining the decisions that will be made as a result of the research can be a powerful tool when a team is using research for the wrong reasons. I’ve seen teams become so risk-adverse that they want to test every single thing. I’ve also seen teams become so beholden to a process that they don’t know when or even how to deviate from it. In those cases, defining the decision that will be driven and why that decision matters illuminates the more important problem that needs to be addressed within the team.