Research aids in decision-making at every stage of product development, helping product managers and other team members reduce risks and minimize the costs of testing ideas. Of course, research cannot provide 100% certainty or guarantee success in every project, but it can save teams and companies significant time and money.

Qualitative research is the most common tool in a product manager’s arsenal for gathering user information and testing hypotheses. However, there’s a temptation to rely solely on qualitative research, sometimes unnecessarily. As a result, it’s important to understand the benefits (and limitations) of qualitative research, which we will discuss below.

In this article, we’ve collected essential knowledge about qualitative research that can help product managers use it as effectively as possible. Over the course of this guide, we’ll talk about primary methods for qualitative research, when to apply them, and how to draw conclusions from their results. In addition, we will also review the stages of conducting user interviews and give practical recommendations for each of them.

This guide is a result of our collaboration with experienced researchers:

What is qualitative research, and what are its limitations?

Put simply, qualitative research can help answer the questions “how?” and “why?”.

Qualitative research can help product managers to formulate and refine hypotheses that can be tested with quantitative methods (strategies based on survey data, behavioral statistics, and more).

The goal of qualitative research is to understand the root of current or intended user behavior. Well-executed research can help product managers uncover how people think, what their motives are, how they structure their decisions, and how (and why) they use particular products.

Qualitative research methods cannot count things, estimate proportions, or identify the prevalence of certain characteristics within large populations of users. To reach those goals, quantitative research methods should be used. For example, it’s incorrect to conclude from a series of interviews that if 5 out of 10 clients mentioned a problem, 50% of clients have encountered the same issue. This is because qualitative methodologies do not imply an extrapolation of their results to a general population (ex. all users). In other words, you cannot say that all of your users will behave in the same way as a set of respondents do.

That said, this doesn’t mean that qualitative research is bad, wrong, or unreliable. However, it signals that this methodology has a different purpose: to help product managers understand the essence of user behavior. Qualitative research can assist PMs in figuring out the reasons why users act in particular ways. This is very important information for strategic decision-making.

In qualitative research, a sample of users doesn’t need to necessarily replicate the structure of the general population. For example, within the context of user interviews, you can select respondents based on different principles according to your research goals. In these instances, you can single out “typical” or “representative” users, or choose to focus on edge cases.

Types of qualitative research

In the broadest sense, qualitative studies include various types of interviews, group discussions, observations, and diary studies. Product teams most often use:

  • In-depth interviews — unstructured or semi-structured conversations with respondents. Here, problem identification and solution-oriented interviews are usually distinguished.
  • Usability tests — structured sessions that allow researchers to observe the completion of tasks within the product.

Diaries, focus groups, and expert interviews are used much less frequently.

In-depth interviews and usability tests are often combined in a single session. This means that it’s quite typical to conduct a usability test that contains several elements of an interview.

All of these methods can solve different challenges that a product manager encounters in their work.

Problem-solving interviews can help product managers understand the context in which users engage with a product. For example, product managers can learn more about users’ lifestyle, what problems they’re focused on solving, what tasks they’ve been assigned, and what they value.

Solution interviews provide product managers with an opportunity to test ideas, and discover whether potential solutions can address a user’s problems (and to what extent).

Similarly, usability tests allow PMs to assess how convenient a product is for solving particular user problems.

On the other hand, diaries bring research teams as close as possible to “real life” user situations, and allow PMs to track user behavior and usage dynamics in a natural context.

Focus groups and other formats of group discussion can help PMs understand how users discuss a product or problem in a group setting, and can provide additional learnings that may emerge from this microcosm model.

Expert interviews stand somewhat apart from other forms. They are not concerned with the personal experience of experts but can help PMs clarify the market structure, audience characteristics, and trends of a particular domain. These interviews are broad in scope because the experts often have a professional overview of markets as a whole.

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When to conduct research

In short, qualitative research can be applied at all stages of product development.

All product discovery processes, one way or another, involve obtaining additional information when:

  • Launching an entirely new product (Ex. when only ideas, concepts, prototypes, or MVPs exist)
  • Entering a new market (Ex. another country or segment)
  • Expanding the functionality of an existing product
  • Collecting feedback on an existing product/solution
    • Interpreting behavioral metrics or results of experiments
    • Understanding a user’s general frame of mind, 
    • Gathering feedback for further feature improvements
    • Prioritizing existing work

Sometimes, qualitative research may not be necessary in these situations, as it may be impractical.

When not to conduct research

When results won’t influence a decision

When a decision has already been made, or changes to a product cannot be implemented for various reasons (ie. lack of resources), product managers should not prioritize research. 

This point seems obvious, but in practice, such situations occur regularly. For example, sometimes research requests are made when a team wants additional confirmation of their beliefs about a particular issue, and is not open to exploring alternative outcomes or recommendations.

Sometimes, there’s a desire to conduct research to broaden a team’s horizons more generally, but without a clear understanding of how research results will help a business. In this case, it’s necessary to assess the feasibility of research projects and consider the company’s ability to allocate resources for activities that won’t yield immediate results.