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Jan 23, 2024

How to build a UX research repository (that people actually use)

Extend the shelf life of your research and set your team up for long-term success with a robust research repository. Here’s how to build yours from scratch.

Ella Webber

Every UX research report was once a mountain of raw, unstructured data. User research repositories help collate that data, disseminate insights, democratize research, and spread the value of user research throughout your organization.

However, building (and maintaining) an accessible user research repository is no simple task. Getting people to use it is a whole other ball game.

In this guide, we’ll break down the specifics of user research repositories, some best practices and the benefits of building your own research library, plus how to get started, and our favorite examples of robust research repositories.

Fill your research repository with critical user insights

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What is a research repository in UX research?

A user research repository is a centralized database which includes all your user research data, UX research reports , and artifacts. Different teams—like design, product, sales, and marketing—can find insights from past projects to contextualize present scenarios and make informed decisions.

Storing all your research data in a single place ensures every team has access to user insights and can use them to make research-driven decisions. Typically maintained by a research operations team, a well-structured research repository is an important step toward breaking down silos and democratizing user research for the entire organization.

If you’re looking to improve research maturity across your organization and start scaling UX research , building a watertight user research repository is your first step.

What’s included in a research repository?

Building a UX research repository can be challenging. Between compiling all the data, creating a collaborative space, and making it easily accessible to the teams who need it, you might be struggling to identify a start point.

Here’s a checklist of all the essentials to streamline the setup:

✅ Mission and vision ✅ Research roadmap ✅ Key methodologies ✅ Tools and templates ✅ Research findings ✅ Raw data and artifacts

Mission and vision

Whether you have a dedicated user research team or involve multiple departments in the UX research process , you need a clear mission and vision statement to create a shared purpose and foster collaboration. Not only should you include your wider UX research strategy and vision, but a ‘North Star’ for your repository, too.

For example, the mission statement for your repository could be, “Streamline our UX design process and promote informed decision-making with a centralized hub of user feedback and insights.”

Research roadmap

A clear UX roadmap makes it easy to prioritize your research efforts and seamlessly organize your repository. It analyzes your objectives and outlines all upcoming projects in a given timeline. You can use this roadmap to catalog your previous research campaigns and plan ahead .

Key methodologies

You should also list all the research methods you follow to create repeatable success. You can save SOPs for different methodologies to minimize the scope of error and set your team members up for success. Mia Mishek , UX Research Operations Program Manager at Pax8 , explains:

“Every repository should include common documents related to the research at hand, such as a brief, moderation guide/test script, and readout. Having all the documents easily accessible allows others to cross-reference while consuming research and use past research as a jumping-off point for further research.”

Tools and templates

Create a list of collaboration and product management tools for different steps in the product research process , such as usability testing , interviews, note-taking, data analysis, and more. Outline these and don’t forget to give quick access links to all your UX research tools .

Outlining instructions and key templates for specific research methods or analysis techniques can be useful. Consider including any tried-and-tested question repositories or best practices.

Research findings

Your repository should include a set of findings from every study. While you can add the final reports for all projects, it’s also a good practice to add quick takeaways and tags to make your collection easily searchable.

If you’ve conducted different types of analysis, it’s worth linking these here, too. Whether that’s a photo of your thematic analysis workshop, a walkthrough video of your results, or a link to digital affinity diagram.

Raw data and artifacts

Alongside research reports, you can store all the raw data from each study, like user interview recordings and transcriptions. Your team members can revisit this data to plan upcoming projects effectively or connect the dots between past and present insights.

Depending on how you store this, you may want to consider keeping piles of raw data in a ‘view only’ or locked area of the repository, to avoid risk of accidental tampering or deletion.

What are the benefits of a research repository?

User research is an ongoing process. The trickiest part for most teams when pursuing continuous research is breaking down silos and establishing a democratized approach to prevent wasteful overlap, unnecessary effort, and a lack of knowledge-sharing.

A good research repository fosters a culture of collaboration and supports user-centric design through collectively prioritizing and understanding your users.

Here are a few core benefits of building a user research repository:

Quickly access user research data

An easily searchable UX research repository makes it easy to filter through a mountain of data and find specific insights without pouring hours into it. Mia emphasizes the importance of making the information easily accessible:

“You should be able to go into the repository, understand what research has been done on X topic, and get the information you’re after. If you need someone else to walk you through the repository, or if there’s missing information, then it’s not doing its job.”

By creating a self-serve database, you can make all the data accessible to everyone and save time spent on reviewing prior research to feed existing efforts.

Inspire ideas and prioritize future research

A research repository can also help in identifying knowledge gaps in your existing research and highlight topics worth further exploration. Analyzing your past data can spark ideas for innovative features and guide your research efforts.

Different teams can utilize a research repository to help guide the product roadmap on areas that still need to be explored in the app, or areas that need to be revisited.

Mia Mishek , UX Research Operations Program Leader at Pax8

Build a shared knowledge library

One crucial advantage of a repository is that it helps democratize user research. Not only does it highlight the value of research and showcase the efforts of your product and research teams, but by centralizing research findings, you’re making it easier for everyone to make data-informed, user-centric decisions.

A research repository also provides versatility and other use cases to your research insights—from product managers to sales leaders, all stakeholders can access user insights for making research-driven decisions across the organization. Whether that’s informing a sales pitch, product roadmap, or business strategy; there’s endless applications for UX research.

This practice of knowledge-sharing and democratizing user insights is a big step in building a truly user-centered approach to product development.

Contextualize new data with past evidence

Your repository records all the raw data from past projects, making it easier to compare and contrast new findings with previous user research. This data also allows researchers to develop more nuanced reports by connecting the dots between present and past data.

Mia explains how these repositories cut down on the redundant effort of trying to dig up old research data on any topic: “A repository benefits UX researchers and designers because it’s not uncommon to ask what research was done on XYZ area before conducting more research. No one wants to do reductive work, so without a repository, it’s easy to forget past research on similar topics.”

What’s more, research libraries avoid the same research being repeated; instead allowing as many people as possible to benefit from the research, while minimizing the resources and time used.

4 Best research repository tools and templates

You don’t need a specialized tool to create a user research repository. A well-organized, shared Google Drive or Notion teamspace with detailed documentation can be just as effective. However, if you can, a dedicated tool is going to make your life a lot easier.

Here are four research repository tools to consider for storing existing and new research insights on, and working cross-functionally with multiple teams.

1. Confluence

Confluence is a team workspace tool by Atlassian that streamlines remote work. You can use this platform to create research docs from scratch, share them with your team, and save them for future reference. Plus, the tool lets you design wikis for each research study to organize everything—raw data, findings, and reports—in a structured manner.

You also get a centralized space to store data and docs from extra accounts, so multiple people can contribute to and access your repository.

Condens is a centralized UX research and analysis platform for storing, structuring, and analyzing user research data–and sharing those insights across your organization. You can collaborate on data analysis, create pattern recognition, and create artifacts for comprehensive outcomes.

With a detailed research repository guide to help you on your way, it's a great tool for teams of any size. Plus, you can also embed live Maze reports, alongside other UX research and analysis tools.

3. Dovetail

Dovetail is a user research platform for collecting, analyzing, and storing research projects. You can save and retrieve all documents from a single database, while tags, labels, and descriptions also simplify the task of cataloging past data.

The platform gives you a strong search function to quickly find any file or data from the entire hub. You can also use multiple templates to migrate data from different platforms to Dovetail.

4. Airtable

Airtable is a low-code tool for building apps that enables you to create a custom database for your UX research projects. It’s ideal for product teams looking to set up the entire repository from scratch because you need to configure everything independently.

You get a high degree of flexibility to integrate different data sources, design a customized interface, and access data in dynamic views. What’s more, you can build an interactive relational database to request resources from others and stay on top of the status of existing work.

Here’s a research repository database to get started.

Creating a UX research repository: 5 Best practices

Designing a bespoke repository to organize your research requires careful planning, a thorough setup workflow, and continuous maintenance. But once it’s ready, you’ll wonder how your product team survived without it. To get you started, here’s our five best practices to implement this process effectively and kickstart your repository.

1. Define clear objectives for your repository

Start by outlining what you want to achieve with a shared research library. You might want to standardize research methodologies across the board or build alignment between multiple teams to create more consistent outputs.

This goal-setting exercise gives all team members a purpose to pursue in upcoming projects. When they know what success looks like, they can strategically plan research questions and choose analysis methods.

Knowing your objectives will also help shortlist the best research and usability testing tools . You can invest in a good platform by evaluating a few core capabilities needed to achieve your goals (more on that shortly).

2. Create a structure and define taxonomy

You can structure your UX repository as a database with multiple fields. For example, here are a few fields to easily categorize responses when documenting user experience research:

• Key insights
• User quotes
• Criticality
• Sources of knowledge
• Possible solutions that were considered

Besides creating a structure to document a research study, you also need a well-defined taxonomy to help people find information. Defining your research taxonomy will help you categorize information effectively and design consistent naming conventions.

For example, you can create a set of predefined categories for every research study like:

• Focus country: USA, Australia, Canada, France
• Collected feedback: Feature request, feature enhancement, bugs
• Methodology: Usability testing, user interview, survey
• User journey stage: Before activation, power user, after renewal

💡 Less jargon, more alignment

Involve multiple stakeholders when defining the terminology for your library, and check it aligns with any internal Style Guides or glossaries. This ensures alignment from the outset, and makes it easy for everyone to filter results and find what they need.

3. Distribute knowledge through atomic research

Atomic research is an approach to UX research that prioritizes user research data organization. It proposes that you conduct research so that every piece of the project becomes easily reusable and accessible to all stakeholders.

According to the atomic research approach , you need to consider four components to organize your repository:

• Experiments (We did this): Explain the research methodology and the steps you followed in conducting the study
• Facts (We saw this): Document the main findings evident from the data gathered in the study
• Insights (Which made us think): Capture the key insights extracted from analyzing the research data
• Opportunities (So we did that): List the decisions and action items resulting from the research analysis

Using atomic research, you can create nuggets to organize information in your repository.

Nuggets are the smallest unit of information containing one specific insight, like a user quote, data point, or observation. The different types of nuggets to categorize your research data include observations , evidence , and tags . By breaking down a vast study into smaller nuggets, you can make your repository informative at a glance. You can use your defined taxonomy to label these nuggets.

4. Identify the creators and consumers in your team

Before outlining your repository’s structure, you need to define workflows for creating, reviewing, and maintaining the library. Spend some time defining who will:

• Own the setup process and create the overall guidelines
• Access past documents and add contributions consistently
• Maintain the documents for easy accessibility
• Only need to access customer insights

Assigning these roles makes it easy to estimate your team's bandwidth for building and maintaining such a massive library. You can also manage permissions in your repository platform to give everyone access to relevant materials and protect confidential resources.

Mia explains why this is important to make your repository more meaningful for end-users:

“You need to keep in mind the JTBD (jobs to be done) framework when building a repository. What do the folks accessing your repository need to do? Who are those people? You need to build your repository with the purpose of those distinct users.”

5. Shortlist and finalize tools based on your goals

When evaluating different research repository tools, consider your requirements and compare different platforms against the essential features you need for this repository. If you’re creating one for the first time, it’s okay to create an experimental setup to understand the impact.

Here are a few key factors to consider when shortlisting research repository tools:

• Ease of setup and use: Choose a platform with a gentle learning curve, especially if you have a big team with multiple members. A quick setup and user-friendly interface can maximize adoption and make your repository more accessible.
• Collaboration capabilities: A good repository lets you interact with different team members through comments, chat boxes, or tags. You can also manage permissions and set up different roles to share relevant research with specific stakeholders and team members .
• Tagging and searchability: Your repository is only as good as its ability to show precise search results for any keyword. Consider the ease of labeling new information and test the search function to check the accuracy of the results.
• Export and integrations: You’ll need to export some data or streamline your entire research ops setup by integrating different tools. So, evaluate each tool’s integration capabilities and the options to export information.

Plus, your ideal tool might be a combination of tools. For example, Steven Zhang , former Senior Software Engineer at Airtable, used a combination of Gong and Airtable when first building a UX research repository . It’s about considering your needs and finding what works for your team.

Democratize user research in your organization

A UX research repository gives you easy access to insights from past projects, and enables you to map new insights to old findings for a more nuanced understanding of your users.

More importantly, building a single source of truth for your entire organization means everyone on your team can access research data to inform their projects.

Different teams can use this data to make strategic design decisions, iterate product messaging, or deliver meaningful customer support.

Sound good? That’s what we thought—build your repository today to evangelize and democratize UX research in your organization.

Need a seamless solution to collect meaningful research insights?

Maze helps you collect and analyze research to find purposeful data for your product roadmap

Frequently asked questions about UX research repository

How do I create a user research repository?

You can create a user research repository with these best practices:

• Define clear objectives for your repository
• Create a structure and define taxonomy
• Distribute knowledge through atomic research
• Identify the creators and consumers in your team
• Shortlist and finalize tools based on your goals

What makes a good research repository?

A good research repository tells the team's mission and vision for using research. It's also easily searchable with relevant tags and labels to categorize documents, and includes tools, templates, and other resources for better adoption.

What’s the purpose of a research repository?

A research repository aims to make your UX research accessible to everyone. It democratizes research operations and fosters knowledge-sharing, giving everyone on your team access to critical insights and firsthand user feedback.

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Research repositories for tracking ux research and growing your researchops.

October 18, 2020 2020-10-18

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Every UX team needs to organize its user research in a research repository. I first worked on a research repository in the early 1990s. The lessons I learned then still hold true today, as the UX community gets serious about managing and growing user- research programs. These efforts now fall under the umbrella term “ Research Ops ” (with “Ops” being short for “operations” ) .

In This Article:

What is a research repository, relevant elements in a research repository, convenience and findability features in a repository.

A research repository is a shared collection of UX-research-related elements that should support the following functions at the organization level:

• grow UX awareness and participation in UX work among leadership, product owners, and the organization at large
• support UX research work, so UX professionals may be more productive as they plan and track research

There are two main types of content in a research repository:

• The input to doing UX research: information for planning and conducting research
• The output from doing UX research: study findings and reports

Before making a repository, analyze the UX-related processes and tools used (currently or in the near future) in your organization. Consider creating a mind map of how research gets done, or even a journey map or service blueprint of how research is initiated and results are used on development teams.

Some important components that can be housed in a research repository include:

Infrastructure

• Research team’s mission and vision communicate what the team is about, how it works, and how it hopes to work in the future. This information can help others to understand the team’s capabilities, what they can expect, and what they can request. An example mission is: The UX-research team provides user and customer research and guidance for all products, services, and systems at the organization in order to maximize usefulness, usability, efficiency, enjoyment, and support for the organization’s vision.
• Descriptions of research methods help the team learn or be reminded of a process and the reasons for different research types. Method descriptions and best practices can promote consistent high-quality work and even teach a less experienced researcher.
• Tools and templates for conducting and analyzing research , such as templates for test plans, protocols, reports, interview scripts, user tasks, consent forms, notetaking and tips for using remote-research or analysis tools could also be housed her

Research Planning

• Strategic research plans for the organization and for individual projects — like you might see in a research roadmap — can keep researchers and the rest of the team focused on the most important areas to research as opposed to every single product feature. When stored in a research repository these are easy to find and access
• Schedules make research accessible to everyone, by sharing the date, time, location, research method, and what’s being studied. Armed with this information, anyone can join or ask to join in on studies, or at least look for findings upon completion
• Detailed research plans communicate that research will be happening and how. When stored in a repository they serve as a vision document to align stakeholders and the rest of the team.
• Research requests enable product teams to request user research to be done. Depending on the research team’s size, mission, planning, and culture, research requests may not be available at all organizations. Research requests can give insight in the research needs at your organization and can drive UX-team growth.

Data and Insights

• Research reports tell what happened in the research study. They include overarching themes, detailed findings, and sometimes recommendations.
• Research insights are the detailed findings or chunks of information acquired from each research study. While findings also appear in reports, saving them as their own entities makes it easier to digest them, mark their severity , track their status, and link to specific design and development assignments in the backlog or project database. In other words, each insight is digestible and easy to see, and thus more likely to get addressed.
• Recordings and transcriptions stored in the repository or, alternatively, linked from the repository, They make user data easily accessible. Summarizing and transcribing each video allows teams to search for exactly what they're looking for. (Fun historical note: In the early 1990s, when usability-testing recordings were too large to store online, my team at Lotus created a video library. Developers could check out the physical videotapes as one would a book at a library. People were so dedicated that they borrowed them to watch the tests they had missed, and sometimes we had to make extra copies of tapes to meet the demand.)
• Raw notes and artifacts from research sessions are often trashed after they have been analyzed. But some teams keep the notes in case they might be useful for future analysis — for example, if a team was in a rush and focused on one area of the design at the time of the study,  later it may be able to revisit the notes to glean insights related to other aspects of the design. Those notes could help inform journey maps, personas, or other user-focused artifacts.

What Is NOT Always in a Research Repository

• UX-data analysis is usually done with specialized tools. The result of the analysis could be a text file (for example, for quantitative data analysis done in software such as R) or could be hosted online in a tool-specific format. If the latter, then the repository can link to the result of the analysis. For example, researchers may have conducted thematic analysis using Dovetail; the full research report can include a link to that board so team members can see the reasoning behind the findings.
• A participant repository or panel is usually not stored within a research repository, even though recruiting research participants is a core function of user research. That’s because the goals and audience for the two repositories tend to be quite different. But it can be helpful for them to link to one another.

There are many other components that research teams need to track internally but that are less likely to be part of a research repository, even though they may be linked from it: user stories in a backlog, participant recruiting tools, and budget tracking for research projects.

People should be able to easily find and discover information about research. Findable and accessible information makes it possible for the team to easily be part of a research project and feel ownership about the findings. Here are some repository attributes that make it easy to use:

• Supporting tags and metadata, to help people find items by the most granular topics
• Searchable by keyword (e.g. for research on a certain product feature), project, team, finding, severity, status, and more
• Hosted in a tool that people can easily access , use, learn and that matches the organization’s culture and mental model
• Portable, so that repository elements can be easily exported to other applications or formats

Research repositories store and organize information about UX research. They collect not only methodology-related documents, but also research results at various levels of granularity (from individual findings to reports). Their purpose is to streamline the work of the research team and also to make research widely available and easy to consume throughout the organization.

For more information about the growing ResearchOps community, see https://researchops.community/ .

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Unlocking the Power of Research Repositories for Product Managers

Zita Gombár

Bence Mózer

A centralized system is required to develop a good understanding of your users across teams and across your firm. Here's when research repositories come in handy. They bring together various points of user input and feedback. So, whether you're a UX researcher, designer, or a product manager, this post is for you.

Have you ever wished for faster answers to your research questions? If your team has already conducted a few studies, you likely have a solid understanding of your users and may already have the answers you need.  

However, various other departments within your organization are likely also receiving feedback from customers. How do you connect your data with insights from other teams?  And how can you ensure that people have access to research data when they need it?  Discover the solution in a research repository.

Based on our extensive experience working with diverse clients, including large enterprises and NGOs, UX Studio has developed a comprehensive ebook on research repositories for UX research . This resource covers all the essential aspects, starting with the definition and key principles of research repositories, along with insights on building and maintaining them for long-term success.  We would also like to provide you with a sneak peek from the book about why a research repository is crucial for your organization.

What is a research repository?

Any system that keeps research data and notes that can be quickly retrieved, accessed, and used by the entire team is referred to as a research repository (or research library). Let’s look at the key components of this definition.

A research repository is a system that stores all of your research data, notes, and documentation (such as research plans, interview guides, scripts, personas, competitor analysis, etc.) connected to the study. It allows for easy search and access by the entire team.

Let’s take a closer look at the elements of this definition:

Storage system. 

A system of this type is any tool you use to store and organize your research data. This can take various forms and structures. It could be an all-in-one application, a file-sharing system, a database, or a wiki.

Research data. 

Any information that helps you understand your users can be considered research data. It makes no difference what format is used. Text, images, videos, or recordings can all be used to collect research data. Notes, transcripts, or snippets of customer feedback can also be used.

Ease of use. 

Anyone on your team can access, search, explore, and combine research data if it is simple to use. Developers, designers, customer success representatives, and product managers are all examples of this. Any of them can gain access to the research repository in order to learn more about users. The researcher is no longer the gatekeeper when it comes to understanding users.

Since it’s a massive collection of research, the research repository is also the team’s go-to place for learning about users and their pain points. Instead of searching three different locations for reports, all research information is centralized in one single place. 

How can a research repository help your company?

As a company starts doing more and more user research, this means more studies, more reports, and a whole lot of information that you cannot really access unless you know who worked on what.  

If you work in a company without a research repository, you probably rely a lot on file sharing software like SharePoint or Google Drive. This means you spend a lot of time navigating through folders and files to find what you’re looking for (if you can find it at all), as well as sharing file links to distribute your work and findings. 

How often do you wish for a simpler way of organizing all this data?

Let’s explore how research repositories can elevate your research work!

The go-to place to learn about users

Since it’s a massive collection of research, the research repository is the team’s go-to place for learning about users and their pain points. Instead of searching three different locations for reports, all research information is centralized in one single place. 

Speeding up research.

Whenever you have a new research question, you can start by reviewing existing data. Since it’s all organized according to tags, you don’t have to go through multiple reports to find it. This way, if there’s relevant information, you get the answers faster. 

Get more value from original research.

If research observations are no longer tied to report findings, they can be reused to answer other questions. Of course, if they’re relevant. This builds on the previous point of speeding up research. Also, it allows you to get more value from original studies.  

No more repeated research.

As reports get buried and lost in file-sharing systems, so does the information they contain. We briefly mentioned this before. But you’re probably familiar with the situation. Someone performed a study on a feature at some point. Let’s say that another person joins the team and wants to learn about that feature. Without any knowledge of existing research, researchers start a new study for the same question. If, on the other hand, all the research data is centralized, you can see what questions have already been asked. 

Enable evidence-based decisions.

Probably this is one of the biggest wins for a research repository. It allows teams to see the big issues that need to be solved. Also, teams get to see on their own, how these issues come up. On top of that, they can now use that data to prioritize projects and resources. This makes it easier than using gut feelings or personal opinions.

Anyone can learn about users – to increase UX research maturity.

By default, the researcher is the person who knows everything about users and their problems. A research repository opens up this knowledge to anyone who is interested. With a bit of time and patience, everybody can get to know users. 

You can prioritize your roadmap.

Putting all the data together will give you an overall view of the user experience. This, in turn, will help you see what areas you need to prioritize on your roadmap.

Yes, it takes time and resources to set up and maintain a research repository. But the benefits are clearly worth that investment. Even more so since information, along with access to it are essential for high-performing teams. Besides research, it is about building trust and transparency across your team and giving them what they need to make the right decisions. 

When to use a research repository?

Whether you are thinking about setting up a research system for an ongoing project or you would like to organize your existing insights, there are a few things to consider.

Long term, ongoing research. 

This is common for in-house research. It may also occur if the user research is outsourced to a third party. Data will begin to pile up at some point in long-term, ongoing research. It will become more difficult to locate information as it accumulates. We’ve also discussed the issues that may arise if you only rely on reports. In this case, you will undoubtedly require a solution to organize and structure all of the research findings.

This is the first major scenario in which you should strongly consider establishing a research repository. Even if you’re a one-person team, and you’re the only one doing the research, it’s a good idea to start promoting research repositories. Explain your situation to your manager or team .

Multiple researchers are working on the same project.

It doesn’t really matter whether this is a short-term or long-term project. When multiple researchers are working on the same project, they require a solution that will assist them in compiling all of the data. You can collect all of the observations using a research repository. Even if the two researchers discuss their findings, using a research repository increases the likelihood that important data will not be overlooked.

Good products are developed from great insights. However, teams require access to these insights in order to integrate them into the product. This is where research repositories can be helpful.

Setting up a research repository may take some time, but it is a great investment for scaling research operations in the long run and increasing UX research maturity. Despite the initial effort required, a research repository can take your entire research to the next level. For this, you can use the tools you have at hand such as Notion or Google Sheet, or you can try out dedicated tools such as Dovetail or Condens .

At UX Studio, we have assisted numerous companies in setting up their research processes, enabling them to conduct in-house research and enhance their product development with a user-centered approach.

For comprehensive guidance on research repositories, we invite you to download our complete book here .

Do you want to build your in-house research team or create your own repository?

As a top UI/UX design agency , UX studio has successfully handled over 250 collaborations with clients worldwide. 

Should you want to improve the design and performance of your digital product, message us to book a consultation with us.  Our experts would be happy to assist with the UX strategy, product and user research, or UX/UI design.

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How to build a research repository: a step-by-step guide to getting started

Research repositories have the potential to be incredibly powerful assets for any research-driven organisation. But when it comes to building one, it can be difficult to know where to start. In this post, we provide some practical tips to define a clear vision and strategy for your repository.

Done right, research repositories have the potential to be incredibly powerful assets for any research-driven organisation. But when it comes to building one, it can be difficult to know where to start.

As a result, we see tons of teams jumping in without clearly defining upfront what they actually hope to achieve with the repository, and ending up disappointed when it doesn't deliver the results.

Aside from being frustrating and demoralising for everyone involved, building an unused repository is a waste of money, time, and opportunity.

So how can you avoid this?

In this post, we provide some practical tips to define a clear vision and strategy for your repository in order to help you maximise your chances of success.

🚀 This post is also available as a free, interactive Miro template that you can use to work through each exercise outlined below - available for download here .

Defining the end goal for your repository

To start, you need to define your vision.

Only by setting a clear vision, can you start to map out the road towards realising it.

Your vision provides something you can hold yourself accountable to - acting as a north star. As you move forward with the development and roll out of your repository, this will help guide you through important decisions like what tool to use, and who to engage with along the way.

The reality is that building a research repository should be approached like any other product - aiming for progress, over perfection with each iteration of the solution.

Starting with a very simple question like "what do we hope to accomplish with our research repository within the first 12 months?" is a great starting point.

You need to be clear on the problems that you’re looking to solve - and the desired outcomes from building your repository - before deciding on the best approach.

Building a repository is an investment, so it’s important to consider not just what you want to achieve in the next few weeks or months, but also in the longer term to ensure your repository is scalable.

Whatever the ultimate goal (or goals), capturing the answer to this question will help you to focus on outcomes over output .

🔎 How to do this in practice…

1. complete some upfront discovery.

In a previous post we discussed how to conduct some upfront discovery to help with understanding today’s biggest challenges when it comes to accessing and leveraging research insights.

⏰ You should aim to complete your upfront discovery within a couple of hours, spending 20-30 mins interviewing each stakeholder (we recommend talking with at least 5 people, both researchers and non-researchers).

2. Prioritise the problems you want to solve

Start by spending some time reviewing the current challenges your team and organisation are facing when it comes to leveraging research and insights.

You can run a simple affinity mapping exercise to highlight the common themes from your discovery and prioritise the top 1-3 problems that you’d like to solve using your repository.

💡 Example challenges might include:

Struggling to understand what research has already been conducted to-date, leading to teams repeating previous research

Looking for better ways to capture and analyse raw data e.g. user interviews

Spending lots of time packaging up research findings for wider stakeholders

Drowning in research reports and artefacts, and in need of a better way to access and leverage existing insights

Lacking engagement in research from key decision makers across the organisation

⏰ You should aim to confirm what you want to focus on solving with your repository within 45-60 mins (based on a group of up to 6 people).

3. Consider what future success looks like

Next you want to take some time to think about what success looks like one year from now, casting your mind to the future and capturing what you’d like to achieve with your repository in this time.

A helpful exercise is to imagine the headline quotes for an internal company-wide newsletter talking about the impact that your new research repository has had across the business.

The ‘ Jobs to be done ’ framework provides a helpful way to format the outputs for this activity, helping you to empathise with what the end users of your repository might expect to experience by way of outcomes.

💡 Example headlines might include:

“When starting a new research project, people are clear on the research that’s already been conducted, so that we’re not repeating previous research” Research Manager

“During a study, we’re able to quickly identify and share the key insights from our user interviews to help increase confidence around what our customers are currently struggling with” Researcher

“Our designers are able to leverage key insights when designing the solution for a new user journey or product feature, helping us to derisk our most critical design decisions” Product Design Director

“Our product roadmap is driven by customer insights, and building new features based on opinion is now a thing of the past” Head of Product

“We’ve been able to use the key research findings from our research team to help us better articulate the benefits of our product and increase the number of new deals” Sales Lead

“Our research is being referenced regularly by C-level leadership at our quarterly townhall meetings, which has helped to raise the profile of our team and the research we’re conducting” Head of Research

Ask yourself what these headlines might read and add these to the front page of a newspaper image.

You then want to discuss each of these headlines across the group and fold these into a concise vision statement for your research repository - something memorable and inspirational that you can work towards achieving.

💡Example vision statements:

‘Our research repository makes it easy for anyone at our company to access the key learnings from our research, so that key decisions across the organisation are driven by insight’

‘Our research repository acts as a single source of truth for all of our research findings, so that we’re able to query all of our existing insights from one central place’

‘Our research repository helps researchers to analyse and synthesise the data captured from user interviews, so that we’re able to accelerate the discovery of actionable insights’

‘Our research repository is used to drive collaborative research across researchers and teams, helping to eliminate data silos, foster innovation and advance knowledge across disciplines’

‘Our research repository empowers people to make a meaningful impact with their research by providing a platform that enables the translation of research findings into remarkable products for our customers’

⏰ You should aim to agree the vision for your repository within 45-60 mins (based on a group of up to 6 people).

Creating a plan to realise your vision

Having a vision alone isn't going to make your repository a success. You also need to establish a set of short-term objectives, which you can use to plan a series of activities to help you make progress towards this.

Focus your thinking around the more immediate future, and what you want to achieve within the first 3 months of building your repository.

Alongside the short-term objectives you’re going to work towards, it’s also important to consider how you’ll measure your progress, so that you can understand what’s working well, and what might require further attention. 

Agreeing a set of success metrics is key to holding yourself accountable to making a positive impact with each new iteration. This also helps you to demonstrate progress to others from as early on in the process as possible.

1. Establish 1-3 short term objectives

Take your vision statement and consider the first 1-3 results that you want to achieve within the first 3 months of working towards this.

These objectives need to be realistic and achievable given the 3 month timeframe, so that you’re able to build some momentum and set yourself up for success from the very start of the process.

💡Example objectives:

Improve how insights are defined and captured by the research team

Revisit our existing research to identify what data we want to add to our new research repository

Improve how our research findings are organised, considering how our repository might be utilised by researchers and wider teams

Initial group of champions bought-in and actively using our research repository

Improve the level of engagement with our research from wider teams and stakeholders

Capture your 3 month objectives underneath your vision, leaving space to consider the activities that you need to complete in order to realise each of these.

2. Identify how to achieve each objective

Each activity that you commit to should be something that an individual or small group of people can comfortably achieve within the first 3 months of building your repository.

Come up with some ideas for each objective and then prioritise completing the activities that will result in the biggest impact, with the least effort first.

💡Example activities:

Agree a definition for strategic and tactical insights to help with identifying the previous data that we want to add to our new research repository

Revisit the past 6 months of research and capture the data we want to add to our repository as an initial body of knowledge

Create the first draft taxonomy for our research repository, testing this with a small group of wider stakeholders

Launch the repository with an initial body of knowledge to a group of wider repository champions

Start distributing a regular round up of key insights stored in the repository

You can add your activities to a simple kanban board , ordering your ‘To do’ column with the most impactful tasks up top, and using this to track your progress and make visible who’s working on which tasks throughout the initial build of your repository.

This is something you can come back to a revisit as you move throughout the wider roll out of your repository - adding any new activities into the board and moving these through to ‘Done’ as they’re completed.

⚠️ At this stage it’s also important to call out any risks or dependencies that could derail your progress towards completing each activity, such as capacity, or requiring support from other individuals or teams.

3. Agree how you’ll measure success

Lastly, you’ll need a way to measure success as you work on the activities you’ve associated with each of your short term objectives.

We recommend choosing 1-3 metrics that you can measure and track as you move forward with everything, considering ways to capture and review the data for each of these.

⚠️ Instead of thinking of these metrics as targets, we recommend using them to measure your progress - helping you to identify any activities that aren’t going so well and might require further attention.

💡Example success metrics:

Usage metrics - Number of insights captured, Active users of the repository, Number of searches performed, Number of insights viewed and shared

User feedback - Usability feedback for your repository, User satisfaction ( CSAT ), NPS aka how likely someone is to recommend using your repository

Research impact - Number of stakeholder requests for research, Time spent responding to requests, Level of confidence, Repeatable value of research, Amount of duplicated research, Time spent onboarding new joiners

Wider impact - Mentions of your research (and repository) internally, Links to your research findings from other initiatives e.g. discovery projects, product roadmaps, Customers praising solutions that were fuelled by your research

Think about how often you want to capture and communicate this information to the rest of the team, to help motivate everyone to keep making progress.

By establishing key metrics, you can track your progress and determine whether your repository is achieving its intended goals.

⏰ You should aim to create a measurable action plan for your repository within 60-90 mins (based on a group of up to 6 people). ‍ ‍

🚀 Why not use our free, downloadable Miro template to start putting all of this into action today - available for download here .

To summarise

As with the development of any product, the cost of investing time upfront to ensure you’re building the right thing for your end users, is far lower than the cost of building the wrong thing - repositories are no different!

A well-executed research repository can be an extremely valuable asset for your organisation, but building one requires consideration and planning - and defining a clear vision and strategy upfront will help to maximise your chances of success.

It’s important to not feel pressured to nail every objective that you set in the first few weeks or months. Like any product, the further you progress, the more your strategy will evolve and shift. The most important thing is getting started with the right foundations in place, and starting to drive some real impact.

We hope this practical guide will help you to get started on building an effective research repository for your organisation. Thanks and happy researching!

‍ Work with our team of experts

At Dualo we help teams to define a clear vision and strategy for their research repository as part of the ‘Discover, plan and set goals’ module facilitated by our Dualo Academy team.  If you’re interested in learning more about how we work with teams, book a short call with us to discuss how we can support you with the development of your research repository and knowledge management process.

Nick Russell

I'm one of the Co-Founders of Dualo, passionate about research, design, product, and AI. Always open to chatting with others about these topics.

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A definitive guide to the ux research repository [2024], satvik soni, december 23, 2023, ux research repository fundamentals.

Let’s start things off with a brief overview of research repositories.

We’ll discuss what a repository is.

And we’ll discuss how it can help you.

Alternatively, you can also just sign up for a free trial of Looppanel , our ah-mazing repository tool. This way, you get a guided tour and live-action experience of how a repository works!

Table of Contents

What is a user research repository, benefits of a user research repository, free user research repository templates, ux research repository tools, how to pick the right research repository tool, repository pitfalls to avoid.

A repository is just store of information. We call it a repository when we want to be fancy 💃.

A user research repository is a place to store research data, notes, and insights.

These can be accessed when needed, ideally by everyone in the organization.

A good repository would let teams across the organization find what they’re looking for on their own. This makes research insights more accessible to the right people at the right time.

A user research repository can start as nothing more than a Google doc.

It can also grow into a complex library of insights within entire applications that can do AI qualitative analysis, auto-organizing of notes, helping you speed up research.

This article will go over all of these possibilities and help you implement the ones you choose. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

There are 3 key benefits of building a UX research repository.

• It speeds up research ⚡
• It makes collaboration easier 🤝
• It prevents redundant research 🔁

⚡ UX Research repositories speed up research

UX Research projects start with a request for user insight.

The project is planned, user research methodologies chosen, participants recruited, user interviews conducted, raw data stored and analyzed, reports created and shared, and finally the data collected is archived somewhere.

A UX research repository speeds up every step of this process.

By definition, the user research repository acts as a storehouse of past insights & reports, along with an archive of the raw data to go back to. This store of historical data allows repositories to cut away requests that can be answered using data from previous projects.

Once the request does go through, past projects help plan the next ones better, often by giving the team a good starting point for what they already know about users.

Our AI repository tool Looppanel does live-note-taking during calls and summarizes transcripts with great accuracy. It frees one up from being dependent on some research assistant's schedule. This is one unique feature that other repository tools don't do btw, just pointing it out 😬.

A good repository also enables team members to bookmark key moments and take notes, ideally tying those with time-stamps to your recording & transcript of the call. We also let teams generate video clips of highlights, so they can share it with stakeholders easily (making you 5x faster at discovering insights & getting buy-in for them!)

Repository tools also help in qualitative analysis, with auto-organizing and affinity mapping of data .

Once that’s done, the team can collaborate on reaching insights.

And speaking of collaborations…

🤝 UX Research Repositories make collaboration easier

UX Research is a team sport. Having a user research repository allows for it to remain one.

In an ideal case, repositories should allow people outside the UXR team to contribute to the organization’s body of knowledge.

Once successfully implemented, the repository can be accessed by anyone. This makes the organization’s knowledge easier to find by those who need it the most.

Easy access to insights and data also allows for collaborative analysis.

Teams will reach diverse and unique conclusions.

Some of these will be insights that researchers could not have thought of.

Some of these will be insights other teams couldn’t have reached on their own.

Inputs from your customer success team could help your copywriters, for example. It is easier to write relevant copy if you already have a record of what the users are complaining about and what they want to hear.

Researchers can also set up frameworks that allow non-researchers to conduct their own quick research. This is amazing—the UXR team is no longer the bottleneck for conducting research! Everyone in the organization gets exposure to research.

User researchers get to see their family once in a while.

Of course this wouldn’t happen from day one and depends on the UX maturity of your organization.

Research democratization only takes place once you enter the later stages of UX maturity. A repository can help a lot with this though, by making it easy for anyone to find research info, especially non-researcher stakeholders. It's all out in the open, and stop seeming like a secret mystic ritual.

🔁 Repositories prevent redundant research

User research piles up quickly. It’s easy to lose your work in the unrelenting jungles of Google drive and Google Sheets and email chains and Miro Boards and floppy disks and pen drives and—you get the idea.

The data and/or insights hidden away in these corners might be required by other teams eventually. When that happens, researchers can hunt for them through the jungles or conduct the research again.

Having a repository makes things easier to find and prevents you from running the same research over and over and over again. Since items are centralized and searchable, you can discover the relevant information within a couple of clicks. 

Above all, it takes the guesswork out of the equation.

Your team doesn’t need to start another project with the troubling intuition that they’ve collected this data before, if only they could remember 🧐.

Some repository tools like Dovetail require you to set up a tagging taxonomy, and get everyone to tag data accurately, if you need to find stuff later. It can get very complicated.

Luckily, new-age repositories like Looppanel have Google-like search features , where you can type and question, keyword, or topic and find all the data you need within the repository.

Some teams also store participant info from previous research projects in repositories. They can then reach out to these people for future research requests. This saves the time and energy they would have spent scrambling for new participants.

Here's a repository for anyone trying to break into UX Research.

If you're just starting out with user research, you can make do a little while with DIY repositories.

They do get overwhelming and scary as information piles up, fair warning. Juggling different kinds of media, manually transcribing data, and searching for old data can be a nightmare.

And then teammate Dave could just mess up the whole thing with ugly formatting.😖

However, if budgets are non-existent and you're still figuring it out, a Notion template will do the job.

There are two User Research repository Notion templates that we are particularly fond of.

Notion’s team provides a free basic User Research template

What we like about this template:

• It’s a great starting point when just getting started with repositories
• It’s easy to populate and share for a single project
• It offers a convenient template for an actionable summary

What can be better about this template:

• As projects pile up, this template can get complicated. At that point it can have the same drawbacks as putting everything on a Drive - finding data can get tough, old research can get buried.
• The search capability across projects wouldn’t be adequate for larger organizations.
• This template is mostly useful post-research. You’ll have to separately compile data here after the study is done. Since the template requires effort post-research, it is not ideal for researchers who do not have the time to summarize their study or the will-power at the end of a long project.

You can get this User Research template here .

This excellent UX research template by Konstantin Escher.

This was originally posted to UX Collective. You can duplicate it and use it for your own team.

• This is intuitive and simple to use, even for non-researchers.
• The template offers a great level of detail. You can get an overall idea that doesn’t overwhelm you. You can then dive deep into the finer data points, if you want.
• Relevant data can be higher up on the page. Your busy teammates won’t appreciate learning about the research team before they can learn about the research.
• As was in the previous one, the search capability across projects wouldn’t be adequate for larger organizations.
• Your team should be comfortable with Notion to use this well. This is not necessarily the template’s fault, just an obstacle you’ll have to overcome.

If you’ve outgrown your DIY repository (or if you don’t want to spend time making one), there are a bunch of great repository tools available for you.

If you have a good idea of your team’s needs, deciding which tool to go for will be easier! 🫠.

Top Research Repository UX tools in 2024

You can start looking through these UX research tools first (listed in no particular order).

• Looppanel - Looppanel is an AI-powered research analysis & repository tool. It's built like a research assistant—to automate all the tedious parts of qualitative research you don't have time for. It can record and transcribe calls, take live notes, organize your data & centralize everything in one place. We may be biased but apparently the cool kids of UX Research use this tool.
• Dovetail - Dovetail is a manual user research analysis & repository tool. You can analyze, synthesize, summarize, and share your customer research on one platform. It requires tagging to make data searchable. It's quite complex to use, so we'd reccommend looking up simpler Dovetail alternatives.
• Condens - Condens is a repository tool that's basically ‘Dovetail lite’. It has similiar workflows, with fewer features and a slightly lighter price tag.
• Aurelius - Among Dovetail alternatives, Aurelius is a more old-school repository tool, for researchers to organize notes, capture insights, and analyze data.
• EnjoyHQ - EnjoyHQ is a repository platform, and is more useful for storage than analysis. It has a lot of integration options.

We've extensively researched and reviewed the best Research Repository tools in 2024. Read all about it here.

Judgement Criteria

When choosing user research tools as repositories, you should review your options based on a few decision criteria.

• Analysis 🧐 How will the tool help with your analyses? Some considerations include— Is there a storage limit? Can you create insights/notes on the fly? Does it offer high quality transcription? Do you have to tag data to find it later?
• Ease of use✌️ Is the tool easy and intuitive to use? Or is it so complex that you need to train your team to use it?
• Tech🤖 Does the tool use AI smartly? How accurate is the transcription feature (ours is 95%, best in the biz💅)? How reliable is the analysis?
• Collaboration 🤝 Does the tool improve collaboration within and across teams?  Does it allow real time collaboration on notes/insights? Can you share clips and reports across your organization, even if some teammates haven’t set up an account?
• Cost 💰 Will it be too much of a burden on the research team’s pockets?
• Privacy 🔒 Is participant data easily erasable? Is research data encrypted?
• Integrations 🔌 Will the repository work with your team’s current “stack” of tools?

There’s a ton of options out there.

Researching research repositories requires a repository.

To make an even more informed decision, ask yourself and your team these questions.

Do you need a repository?

If your organization has just started basic user research, we will recommend against investing time and/or money in a repository. Build out your basic research infrastructure (such as interview templates, research roadmaps, etc.) using trial and error to see what works for you and your organization.

Spend time advocating for research internally. 

If no one buys into your results, it doesn’t matter how nicely they’re cataloged.

You can also opt for a repository tool that's easy and simple enough for beginners to use.

What does your team need?

Is the cost of that tool with extensive tagging options justified? Do you have enough teammates to justify investing in an expensive and complicated repository tool? Is your organization mature enough to need collaboration between researchers and non-researchers?

Consider what will help your unique situation.

The shiniest tool available might overcomplicate your research flow.

Where will your research live?

If your team lives and breathes on Google Drive, they should get their research reports on Google Drive. If your repository doesn’t allow this, “nobody will ever, ever find it”, says Gregg Bernsetin , head of user research for Condé Nast.

Teams usually spend their time on Google Drive, Notion, Confluence, etc.

Ideally, your repository tool should integrate with them to reach your team where they are.

Pick a tool that is fun and easy enough to tempt your team to migrate.

You’ve shed blood, sweat, and tears on this research repository. Let’s see some reasons all your efforts can go to waste. Why do research repositories fail?

Sounds like a good way to end this article 🥰.

We interviewed design and research leaders to find out why 80% of repositories fail. Read the findings in our latest whitepaper here.

Lack of buy-in beforehand

Make a case for repositories in front of your organization. It would be pointless if you built or bought a repository for an organization that does not understand its benefits.

Getting buy-in would involve convincing multiple stakeholders. You would have to convince other teams of the benefits of collaborative research. Convince the product team that being actively involved in the repository will let them create a better product. Convince the marketing team that reading and adding insights will help them understand the customer better. Convince the sales team that repositories are the easiest way to identify the “pain points” people want to pay for.

A team that understands the purpose of implementing a repository across the organization will be more receptive during the onboarding process. Earning your buy-in within and across teams, therefore, can prevent the next pitfall as well.

Improper onboarding

Your team hates you for making them learn another tool.

You hate your team for not picking it up on their own.

To avoid this situation,, spending time and energy making sure everyone understands how to use the repository is always wise!

Your organization should be confident in their repository skills. That way, they’re more likely to use it when making decisions and add to it when they have interesting insights.

A team that struggles with the repository would try to figure things out for ten minutes (data not backed by research) before giving up and going back to their daily work.

Also make sure to stress the importance of participant privacy , especially for the non-researcher.

The wrong tools for the job

This one is obvious (and has been repeated all over the article).

A shiny repository tool with every conceivable feature might hurt your research work. Don’t go too big too soon if your organization is still tiny. Even a large organization just getting started with UX research will be turned off by complexity. It’s easy to fall into the role of a “librarian” if the repository doesn’t align with your workflow and team needs—you don’t want to spend more time curating your research than you do creating it!

There’s of course the other hand here. Work at a thousand person organization where they love UX research? You probably shouldn’t settle for a nice google sheet.

Pick the right tools for the job!

Role ambiguity

Someone from the research team should be accountable for the repository.

Building and maintaining the repository, answering questions related to the repository, onboarding new team members, ensuring that other teams are doing things correctly—these are just some of the tasks that go into a successful repository implementation.

If you are a UX research team of one, you’ll be accountable for all of this! (take a nap)

If your research team has more people, everyone should know what their job is. In the absence of clarity, you get confused team members stepping on each others’ toes.

You can also take cues from the teams at Google and Razorpay.  Read how they built good repositories here .

In Conclusion

Implement a research repository! Your research team will thank you.

Even the most basic repositories will immediately improve your research capabilities.

It's also really important to choose the right tool.

Looppanel is a research repository tool that's built for researchers by researchers, btw. It's easy to use and helps you get to insights 5x faster. You'll love it, just trust us on this.

Try Looppanel for free, and get started on your repository.

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How to find the right UX research repository in 5 steps [plus an evaluation template from Condens]

You've decided you need a user experience (UX) research repository, but you’re not quite sure where to start, and the number of software vendors and tools seems overwhelming. How do you find the right tool for your team, so you can keep your research organized and easily accessible to every stakeholder?

We're here to help.

A user research repository is a touchpoint knowledge base that stores and organizes user data, insights, and research to address feedback, help teams effectively analyze information, and collaborate to improve the product experience (PX).

The 5-step evaluation process in this article shows a structured way of finding the right and best digital tool for your team. And you can support your decision with this free, downloadable goal and evaluation template from Condens.

How extensive the evaluation process will be for your product team depends on the size of your organization and the number of people involved. It may take just a day to decide for a research team of one, but can last several weeks in a large enterprise or business.

So let's get started!

A note: we recommend following the five steps of the following process chronologically, but you may have to go back to earlier steps in some cases. For example, if you learn about an interesting aspect of a repository during a demo that you didn’t think of before (in step 4), you'll want to add it to your requirements list (back in step 2). Some flexibility is helpful here.

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1. Define and prioritize your goals

A common mistake with choosing a user research repository is jumping straight to the tools and starting a comparison . But comparing repository tools is hard to do if you’re not clear on what to look for.

Instead, start by defining what you want to achieve with the repo. Having strategic goals is a crucial step in product development that helps your team understand the functions and benefits of a UX research repository . 

Then, set up a document to put your goals in writing. Here's a goal and evaluation template you can use, including the most frequently mentioned goals UX researchers have for a repository. Make a copy and fill it with the information you gather throughout the process:

Columns A–C: preliminary goals

A key element of the template is column B , which states the goals the repository should serve. A goal consists of: 

The desired result, e.g. centralize existing research data

The end goal’s benefit, e.g. to answer questions from colleagues more quickly

Simply delete the rows in the spreadsheet which contain goals that aren’t relevant to you, and add goals that aren’t listed yet.

Column A describes the overarching function a respective goal belongs to that can help you organize your goals into categories to spot and prioritize them easily. 

Then, use column C to describe expected changes and desired results as concrete examples, potentially referring to concrete roles or scenarios from your organization. The template includes some example references, which you can easily adapt or change to fit your product and market.

Keep in mind: it's important to get buy-in and input from your team and stakeholders early on. Based on your initial draft of goals and use cases (what you fill in and select in columns A and B), you'll know who will be working with the repository and who will be affected by it. Beyond researchers, this can include designers, product managers , sales colleagues, and more. Keep reading to learn how to use column D to note the people involved.

Column D: involve the team and stakeholders

Next, talk to the stakeholders you identify in column D —ask about their pain points, stories, and goals with UX research. It might also help to conduct a stakeholder analysis at this stage to ensure buy-in and support from executives and investors. Involving stakeholders helps to see things you might have missed and increases acceptance once the repository is implemented.

When you involve your team and stakeholders at this stage, it's helpful to be as detailed as possible. For example, if you want to make it easier for stakeholders to find existing research, ask about the last time they tried to learn something from existing research and the research methods they used. Try to discover what a repository needs to offer so stakeholders can use it to reach their product and business goals.

Continuously adapt and refine the spreadsheet according to stakeholder input. You can also add a priority ranking by putting the important goals in the top rows and the less important goals below.

2. Identify your team’s requirements

Now that you have an idea of what the repository should help you do and who to involve in the process, the next step is to think about how to meet the team's needs. Perform a gap analysis to consider: 

The repository tool itself, and the features the software needs to offer

The changes in workflows and habits of the people involved. The larger your organization, the more relevant this aspect will be.

In the template, use columns E and F for each of the two requirement types:

Columns E and F: identify requirements

Column E concerns the capabilities of the tool itself—which features does the tool need to have? Again, be as detailed as possible, and consider things like accessing possibilities for stakeholders and how easy it is to share findings.

Next, column F describes workflow changes: what needs to change compared to the current process? What new tasks do you need to plan for, which procedures will change, and which tasks will disappear? Thinking about the challenges of product management will help you here.

The template includes example answers in columns E and F. Filling out these columns properly—and in collaboration with stakeholders—will help your team discover potential blockers or hurdles early on.

"Whose time is crucial to make the activities work? Why would they invest their time in using the repository? Is this aligned with their goals and wishes?"

3. Create a shortlist of tools

Now you have a good foundation based on your team's needs, you can start looking for research repository tools . 

Start by checking lists of popular and reviewed tools from sites like G2 . This quantitative research gives you different insights from UX designers and product teams. From there, you can create a long list of possible tools, then narrow it down by checking some of your non-negotiable or crucial criteria listed in Column E. 

Try to get to a point where you've only got two or three SaaS (Software as a service) vendors to choose from, then do a more in-depth evaluation (keep reading to learn how).

Pro tip: a question that comes up frequently in the process of shortlisting tools is, should I get a general-purpose tool, like Confluence or Notion, or a dedicated research repository tool?  

There's no right or wrong answer—it depends on your product and company goals and your team's specific needs—but here are a couple of things to consider: 

The main advantage of a general-purpose research repo tool is that typically everyone in your organization already has access, so there's no need to add another tool to your stack , or onboard the team to anything new. 

On the other hand, a dedicated tool for research can support your team beyond simply storing research data and is specifically designed to organize and structure UX data, including ways to search, cross-reference, and share.

4. Use demos and trials

With the two or three vendors on your shortlist, you can now move forward to collect more information. The tools' respective websites and Help Centers should give a good overview of their capabilities—but to tailor your search, contact their sales teams and share your specific goals with them to learn how their tool will meet your product and user needs. This step is where you will conduct usability testing to determine if the tool is a good fit for your team.

Use page two of the goal and evaluation template to structure your evaluation.

The first row is for entering the respective vendor’s name. Then, the template has two main categories:  

User experience , which evaluates how easy and fun it is to use the tool

Functionality , which evaluates whether the tool provides the features you need to accomplish your goals

Beyond the scores (1 is worst, 5 is best), also use the comments section to capture qualitative aspects of each tool.

We recommend you evaluate tools as a team, as employee feedback will help you make a choice that works for everyone. You can either fill in the sheet together, by blocking some time in your calendars to demo the tool as a team, or let each team member and stakeholder evaluate the tools asynchronously. Either way, have each person enter their impressions into the evaluation template so you can keep everyone's information in one relevant spot.

You'll find three more categories for evaluation: 

Security & privacy is usually a question of 'OK' or 'not OK', and requires the involvement of your security or legal team. 

Support & onboarding considers several aspects, like the scope of support and onboarding services included in respective plans; available channels to communicate with the vendor; or even time zone differences to ensure sufficient overlap during a workday.

Pricing is (surprise!) about the tool’s cost for your team.

Most tools offer a live demo to help you understand how the tool would meet your product requirements and achieve your business goals. We also highly recommend making use of any free trials that the tools offer. Ideally, you should use actual research data with a free trial (if your legal team allows it), which is the best way to assess whether the tool is right for your team.

"Pilot the tool and process with a small subset of data before integrating into formal processes and promoting its existence across the company."

5. Assign team roles and make an onboarding plan

After collecting information from demos and trials, it’s time to make a decision. You may want to set up a short meeting with the team, your manager, and other key stakeholders to discuss their feedback and make the final choice together. Cross-functional collaboration helps improve team alignment on the plan throughout the research process. 

Once you decide on a tool, assign someone to be responsible for implementation . This concerns purchasing the tool, defining data structures in the repository, coordinating migration of existing research material, providing access to all users, communicating the repository within the organization, and ensuring everyone is properly onboarded. Getting clear on these roles is especially important for onboarding and working in remote teams . 

Remember, introducing a repository takes time, and a proper implementation plan is critical for success. You don’t have to implement each goal right from the beginning—consider the ranking of goals (from step 1) and focus on the most important goals first to make the task of implementing the research repository more manageable and create momentum.

Finally, assess the value of the repository after some time by benchmarking what you achieved against your initial goals. Ideally, you've defined success measures and metrics upfront (see column G in the template ). Now you can collect data on these success measures, identify where you achieved the goals, and determine where there's room for improvement.

UX research repository FAQs

What is ux research.

User experience (UX) research is the practice of studying user behavior and interactions to help product teams design with the end-user in mind. This focus on delivering a great user experience for the target audience is an approach that helps guide design teams, product teams, and marketing.

What is the role of a UX researcher?

UX researchers will conduct a heuristic evaluation of user interactions with a product to find ways to improve the user experience. Through data analysis, and by asking the right questions, a UX research team can identify product pain points and offer the best solutions.

What is a UX research repository?

A user research repository is a central hub for product teams to store, organize, and analyze information while they collaborate on user research tasks in an effort to improve their products and user experience.

How do I create a UX research repository?

Define and prioritize your goals

Identify your team's requirements

Create a shortlist of tools

Use demos and trials

Assign team roles and make an onboarding plan

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Home Market Research Insights Hub

Research repository software: Definition, types, and examples

What is a research repository software?

A research repository software is defined as a chief source of research insights that organizations and researchers use to uncover findings from research conducted in the past and present. The user research repository  is a platform of consolidated insights that allows researchers to organize, search, and discover all research and survey data in one organized user repository.

The research repository, also known as an insights hub or insights desk, assists researchers in looking for past and present research insights quickly. Meta tagging and structuring the insights help them pull up information much quicker than traditional methods of sifting through research reports.

Think of it like Wikipedia for researchers, where they store data and can easily retrieve it. Researchers, stakeholders, and decision-makers can go back and refer to insights for defining problem areas or spotting trends.

What are the steps to create a research repository software?

Research repository software has the potential to transform the efficiency of your market research activities. Gathering insights and making quick decisions makes a world of difference in the marketplace today. Creating a research repository is simple. However, there are some essential steps you need to follow to ensure the success of the insights hub. 

If adopted correctly, the user research repository can solve micro and macro problems.  It gives better insights into long-term and short-term issues. A unified repository software can provide you with access to millions of data points under a single roof. Let’s dive into the steps of creating a research repository software within an organization.

Change can be challenging, and not everyone accepts it quickly. The core team and leaders must ensure that there is only one source of information and truth for everyone to be on the same page.

• Organize research data for better usability: The key to unlocking high-quality insights from the repository is organizing data for efficient recovery. It may seem essential to manage current projects, but organizing data from historical projects gives you that extra step to unlocking actionable insights. We highly recommend the use of grouping and meta-tagging to help everybody reach insights more quickly. As time is always of the essence, a well-organized repository with a group of tags helps stakeholders understand and use the insights hub more effectively. Organize data by location, time, product, or anything that can help individuals discover insights quickly, thereby boosting research ROI.
• Never forget to add supporting insights: Ensure to display the whole story behind decisions taken during the study. Somebody who has not worked on a particular project must find it easy to understand the rationale behind decisions. Also, list down the best practices and steps to avoid giving everybody else a better picture of any project. Add notes, observations, feedback, challenges, and all such information that explains why researchers conducted specific activities. Teams will benefit from tagged details and save ample time while going back in time to inspect past projects. Sometimes too much information can get overwhelming, but tagging it can help researchers retrieve specific information.
• Collaborate with different types of data: Data is usually collected from various sources in various forms. Also, researchers apply multiple research techniques like qualitative and quantitative research , as per research need. When collated under one roof, all this data can open up a world of possibilities by reducing the time to derive valuable insights. Again, tagging the information leads to better searchability of insights and a better understanding of the research study as a whole. A consolidated platform helps researchers find everything in one place rather than looking at multiple repositories and multiple data storage locations.
• Create snapshots to highlight important information: Business stakeholders and decision-makers never have the time to study a project in detail. Ensure to create critical insights, reports, and findings and display them for a faster reach. Easily digestible reports are beneficial for colleagues who do not reside within the core research team. It also helps other, or new research teams locate insights faster and save a lot of time. Information like the research methodology, costs, and timeline will help external stakeholders get a snapshot of the critical aspects of the research project.
• Tag your insights smartly: Too many tags can confuse others, and too few may let information slip away. Tag your insights with the proper business taxonomy. The index in the insights hub is handy if the tags are correctly maintained. Define tags in advance and ensure everybody has a high-level understanding of the tags to keep everybody on the same page. Try grouping tags. It will boost the implementation of the user research repository. Some tags may overlap with others, but that will help users search for and never miss out on any information.

Keep learning!, we recommend you read our article where we explain everything about an Insights Engine .

Types of research repository software

Research repository softwares can take many forms but let’s talk about the most commonly used ones.

A couple of examples are Airtable and Google Business Suite. Because of the minimum stress laid on the standardization of practices, these tools can’t be reliable, especially in massive organizations where thousands of data points are captured daily. Limited provisions for tagging and searching for information puts you in a tight spot when research insights are needed quickly. Such internal research repositories make storing information a challenge.

• Custom-built research repositories: Larger organizations with healthy research budgets often recognize the shortcomings of the repositories mentioned above and develop their own customized insights hubs. Some work closely with organizations like Microsoft and WeWork to build custom repositories. While this may help solve most challenges, creating a custom repository from scratch is not for everybody. Small or medium-sized organizations would not have the budget or the time to build software from scratch, even though a third party does the heavy lifting. It still costs a lot of money and is often not tested in the actual marketplace to understand the tool’s shortcomings. Any changes that need to be made may take time and depend on the type of contract with the developers. You need to ask yourself whether your organization has the time, resources, and budget to build a repository from scratch?
• Specialized research and insights repository softwares: These platforms have been game-changers in recent years. Due to the shortcomings of the two repositories mentioned above, research organizations took it upon themselves to deliver a product that researchers love. Moreover, they focused more on tool capabilities to reduce the researcher’s efforts, time, and money spent.

Examples of good user research repositories

Let’s take a look at four such examples of leading research repository tools.

• QuestionPro Insights Hub: QuestionPro’s Insights Hub is robust repository software that’s purpose-built and picked by leading brands and market researchers all over the globe. With provisions to have qualitative and quantitative insights under one roof, it is the most preferred software in the market. The tool is built by researchers for researchers and so speaks their language. The convenient-to-use yet highly sophisticated tool uses an advanced analytical setup that guarantees quick insights, no matter the size of the data sets.
• Aurelius Lab: Aurelius lab is a lightweight yet powerful tool that helps researchers bring data under one roof. They aim to help handle the end-to-end research processes without letting researchers face complexities that slow the research process down.
• Bloomfire: Bloomfire boosts collective intelligence and collaboration. They offer a centralized knowledge base for teams within the organization and aim to banish silos. This empowers team members to make confident decisions.
• Dovetail: Dovetail helps researchers make sense of customer research data. This collaborative platform is intuitive and allows researchers to search for insights in the repository software easily. Their motive is to collate insights within minutes, not hours.

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News: Teamscope joins StudyPages 🎉

Data collection in the fight against COVID-19

Data Sharing

6 repositories to share your research data.

Dear Diary, I have been struggling with an eating disorder for the past few years. I am afraid to eat and afraid I will gain weight. The fear is unjustified as I was never overweight. I have weighed the same since I was 12 years old, and I am currently nearing my 25th birthday. Yet, when I see my reflection, I see somebody who is much larger than reality. ‍ I told my therapist that I thought I was fat. She said it was 'body dysmorphia'. She explained this as a mental health condition where a person is apprehensive about their appearance and suggested I visit a nutritionist. She also told me that this condition was associated with other anxiety disorders and eating disorders. I did not understand what she was saying as I was in denial; I had a problem, to begin with. I wanted a solution without having to address my issues. Upon visiting my nutritionist, he conducted an in-body scan and told me my body weight was dangerously low. I disagreed with him. ‍ I felt he was speaking about a different person than the person I saw in the mirror. I felt like the elephant in the room- both literally and figuratively. He then made the simple but revolutionary suggestion to keep a food diary to track what I was eating. This was a clever way for my nutritionist and me to be on the same page. By recording all my meals, drinks, and snacks, I was able to see what I was eating versus what I was supposed to be eating. Keeping a meal diary was a powerful and non-invasive way for my nutritionist to walk in my shoes for a specific time and understand my eating (and thinking) habits. No other methodology would have allowed my nutritionist to capture so much contextual and behavioural information on my eating patterns other than a daily detailed food diary. However, by using a paper and pen, I often forgot (or intentionally did not enter my food entries) as I felt guilty reading what I had eaten or that I had eaten at all. I also did not have the visual flexibility to express myself through using photos, videos, voice recordings, and screen recordings. The usage of multiple media sources would have allowed my nutritionist to observe my behaviour in real-time and gain a holistic view of my physical and emotional needs. I confessed to my therapist my deliberate dishonesty in completing the physical food diary and why I had been reluctant to participate in the exercise. My therapist then suggested to my nutritionist and me to transition to a mobile diary study. Whilst I used a physical diary (paper and pen), a mobile diary study app would have helped my nutritionist and me reach a common ground (and to be on the same page) sooner rather than later. As a millennial, I wanted to feel like journaling was as easy as Tweeting or posting a picture on Instagram. But at the same time, I wanted to know that the information I  provided in a digital diary would be as safe and private as it would have been as my handwritten diary locked in my bedroom cabinet. Further, a digital food diary study platform with push notifications would have served as a constant reminder to log in my food entries as I constantly check my phone. It would have also made the task of writing a food diary less momentous by transforming my journaling into micro-journaling by allowing me to enter one bite at a time rather than the whole day's worth of meals at once. Mainly, the digital food diary could help collect the evidence that I was not the elephant in the room, but rather that the elephant in the room was my denied eating disorder. Sincerely, The elephant in the room

Why share research data?

Sharing information stimulates science. When researchers choose to make their data publicly available, they are allowing their work to contribute far beyond their original findings.

The benefits of data sharing are immense. When researchers make their data public, they increase transparency and trust in their work, they enable others to reproduce and validate their findings, and ultimately, contribute to the pace of scientific discovery by allowing others to reuse and build on top of their data.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." Isaac Newton, 1675.

While the benefits of data sharing and open science are categorical, sadly 86% of medical research data is never reused . In a 2014 survey conducted by Wiley with over 2000 researchers across different fields, found that 21% of surveyed researchers did not know where to share their data and 16% how to do so.

In a series of articles on Data Sharing we seek to break down this process for you and cover everything you need to know on how to share your research outputs.

In this first article, we will introduce essential concepts of public data and share six powerful platforms to upload and share datasets.

What is a Research Data Repository?

The best way to publish and share research data is with a research data repository. A repository is an online database that allows research data to be preserved across time and helps others find it.

Apart from archiving research data, a repository will assign a DOI to each uploaded object and provide a web page that tells what it is, how to cite it and how many times other researchers have cited or downloaded that object.

What is a DOI?

When a researcher uploads a document to an online data repository, a digital object identifier (DOI) will be assigned. A DOI is a globally unique and persistent string (e.g. 10.6084/m9.figshare.7509368.v1) that identifies your work permanently. 

A data repository can assign a DOI to any document, such as spreadsheets, images or presentation, and at different levels of hierarchy, like collection images or a specific chapter in a book.

The DOI contains metadata that provides users with relevant information about an object, such as the title, author, keywords, year of publication and the URL where that document is stored. 

The International DOI Foundation (IDF) developed and introduced the DOI in 2000. Registration Agencies, a federation of independent organizations, register DOIs and provide the necessary infrastructure that allows researchers to declare and maintain metadata.

Key benefits of the DOI system:

• A more straightforward way to track research outputs
• Gives certainty to scientific work
• DOI's versioning system tracks changes to work overtime
• Can be assigned to any document
• Enables proper indexation and citation of research outputs

Once a document has a DOI, others can easily cite it. A handy tool to convert DOI's into a citation is DOI Citation Formatter . 

Six repositories to share research data

Now that we have covered the role of a DOI and a data repository, below is a list of 6 data repositories for publishing and sharing research data.

1. figshare

Figshare is an open access data repository where researchers can preserve their research outputs, such as datasets, images, and videos and make them discoverable. 

Figshare allows researchers to upload any file format and assigns a digital object identifier (DOI) for citations. 

Mark Hahnel launched Figshare in January 2011. Hahnel first developed the platform as a personal tool for organizing and publishing the outputs of his PhD in stem cell biology. More than 50 institutions now use this solution. 

Figshare releases' The State of Open Data' every year to assess the changing academic landscape around open research.

Free accounts on Figshare can upload files of up to 5gb and get 20gb of free storage. 

2. Mendeley Data

Mendeley Data is an open research data repository, where researchers can store and share their data. Datasets can be shared privately between individuals, as well as publicly with the world. 

Mendeley's mission is to facilitate data sharing. In their own words, "when research data is made publicly available, science benefits:

- the findings can be verified and reproduced- the data can be reused in new ways

- discovery of relevant research is facilitated

- funders get more value from their funding investment."

Datasets uploaded to Mendeley Data go into a moderation process where they are reviewed. This ensures the content constitutes research data, is scientific, and does not contain a previously published research article. 

Researchers can upload and store their work free of cost on Mendeley Data.

If appropriately used in the 21st century, data could save us from lots of failed interventions and enable us to provide evidence-based solutions towards tackling malaria globally. This is also part of what makes the ALMA scorecard generated by the African Leaders Malaria Alliance an essential tool for tracking malaria intervention globally. ‍ If we are able to know the financial resources deployed to fight malaria in an endemic country and equate it to the coverage and impact, it would be easier to strengthen accountability for malaria control and also track progress in malaria elimination across the continent of Africa and beyond.

Odinaka Kingsley Obeta

West African Lead, ALMA Youth Advisory Council/Zero Malaria Champion

There is a smarter way to do research.

Build fully customizable data capture forms, collect data wherever you are and analyze it with a few clicks — without any training required.

3. Dryad Digital Repository

Dryad is a curated general-purpose repository that makes data discoverable, freely reusable, and citable.

Most types of files can be submitted (e.g., text, spreadsheets, video, photographs, software code) including compressed archives of multiple files.

Since a guiding principle of Dryad is to make its contents freely available for research and educational use, there are no access costs for individual users or institutions. Instead, Dryad supports its operation by charging a $120US fee each time data is published.

4. Harvard Dataverse

Harvard Dataverse is an online data repository where scientists can preserve, share, cite and explore research data.

The Harvard Dataverse repository is powered by the open-source web application Dataverse, developed by Insitute of Quantitative Social Science at Harvard.

Researchers, journals and institutions may choose to install the Dataverse web application on their own server or use Harvard's installation. Harvard Dataverse is open to all scientific data from all disciplines.

Harvard Dataverse is free and has a limit of 2.5 GB per file and 10 GB per dataset.

5. Open Science Framework

 OSF is a free, open-source research management and collaboration tool designed to help researchers document their project's lifecycle and archive materials. It is built and maintained by the nonprofit Center for Open Science.

Each user, project, component, and file is given a unique, persistent uniform resource locator (URL) to enable sharing and promote attribution. Projects can also be assigned digital object identifiers (DOIs) if they are made publicly available. 

OSF is a free service.

Zenodo is a general-purpose open-access repository developed under the European OpenAIRE program and operated by CERN. 

Zenodo was first born as the OpenAire orphan records repository, with the mission to provide open science compliance to researchers without an institutional repository, irrespective of their subject area, funder or nation. 

Zenodo encourages users to early on in their research lifecycle to upload their research outputs by allowing them to be private. Once an associated paper is published, datasets are automatically made open.

Zenodo has no restriction on the file type that researchers may upload and accepts dataset of up to 50 GB.

Research data can save lives, help develop solutions and maximise our knowledge. Promoting collaboration and cooperation among a global research community is the first step to reduce the burden of wasted research.

Although the waste of research data is an alarming issue with billions of euros lost every year, the future is optimistic. The pressure to reduce the burden of wasted research is pushing journals, funders and academic institutions to make data sharing a strict requirement.  

We hope with this series of articles on data sharing that we can light up the path for many researchers who are weighing the benefits of making their data open to the world.

The six research data repositories shared in this article are a practical way for researchers to preserve datasets across time and maximize the value of their work.

Cover image by Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IG .

References:

“Harvard Dataverse,” Harvard Dataverse, https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/harvard-dataverse

“Recommended Data Repositories.” Nature, https://go.nature.com/2zdLYTz

“DOI Marketing Brochure,” International DOI Foundation, http://bit.ly/2KU4HsK

“Managing and sharing data: best practice for researchers.” UK Data Archive, http://bit.ly/2KJHE53

Wikipedia contributors, “Figshare,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Figshare&oldid=896290279 (accessed August 20, 2019).

Walport, M., & Brest, P. (2011). Sharing research data to improve public health. The Lancet, 377(9765), 537–539. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(10)62234-9

Foster, E. D., & Deardorff, A. (2017). Open Science Framework (OSF). Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA , 105 (2), 203–206. doi:10.5195/jmla.2017.88

Wikipedia contributors, "Zenodo," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zenodo&oldid=907771739 (accessed August 20, 2019).

Wikipedia contributors, "Dryad (repository)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dryad_(repository)&oldid=879494242 (accessed August 20, 2019).

“How and Why Researchers Share Data (and Why They don't),” The Wiley Network, Liz Ferguson , http://bit.ly/31TzVHs

“Frequently Asked Questions,” Mendeley Data, https://data.mendeley.com/faq

Dear Digital Diary, ‍ I realized that there is an unquestionable comfort in being misunderstood. For to be understood, one must peel off all the emotional layers and be exposed. This requires both vulnerability and strength. I guess by using a physical diary (a paper and a pen), I never felt like what I was saying was analyzed or judged. But I also never thought I was understood. ‍ Paper does not talk back.Using a daily digital diary has required emotional strength. It has required the need to trust and the need to provide information to be helped and understood. Using a daily diary has needed less time and effort than a physical diary as I am prompted to interact through mobile notifications. I also no longer relay information from memory, but rather the medical or personal insights I enter are real-time behaviours and experiences. ‍ The interaction is more organic. I also must confess this technology has allowed me to see patterns in my behaviour that I would have otherwise never noticed. I trust that the data I enter is safe as it is password protected. I also trust that I am safe because my doctor and nutritionist can view my records in real-time. ‍ Also, with the data entered being more objective and diverse through pictures and voice recordings, my treatment plan has been better suited to my needs. Sincerely, No more elephants in this room

Diego Menchaca

Diego is the founder and CEO of Teamscope. He started Teamscope from a scribble on a table. It instantly became his passion project and a vehicle into the unknown. Diego is originally from Chile and lives in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

More articles on

How to successfully share research data.

UX research repository

Store and track insights across projects to identify any common patterns in research.

Searchable source of truth

Collect, analyze, and store your customer, feedback, and UX research in Dovetail's searchable insights hub, making research widely available and easy to consume throughout the organization.

Overview of UX repository tools

Think of a product with an excellent user experience (UX). That UX isn't the result of chance. The company's engineering team didn't meet all of the product's technical specifications and, by happenstance, get the look and feel of the product right as well. Nor did the marketing team assemble the right packaging, positioning, and price in isolation.

Today's UX success stories stem from a great deal of time and effort researching what consumers and customers want. Cross-functional teams typically conduct such research, with each member assigned specific and relevant tasks. Companies rely on well-organized UX research repositories to ensure these product teams collaborate effectively.

What is a UX research repository tool?

A UX research repository is a secure knowledge base that product teams use to organize, store, and share their UX research internally. It's a vital tool that helps companies avoid common pitfalls in product development, including siloed research efforts.

The UX research repository makes collaboration easier for different team members and departments to access completed research to apply to aspects relevant aspects of product development.

Companies with large decentralized workforces often find themselves with multiple product teams engaging in similar or overlapping research. By making all completed research accessible, a UX research repository can help product teams avoid duplicative and wasteful research efforts. It can also highlight research insights with a finite shelf life and help product team members maximize the value of those insights before they expire.

A UX research repository can also help business leaders synthesize information across the organization. Too often, businesses miss out on strategic insights because their elements are scattered in emails, spreadsheets, raw data, and research reports. But when you have all those items in one place, it can be easier to identify patterns, spot trends, and draw practical conclusions.

Finally, a UX research repository can help marketing and product team members justify marketing research expenses internally. Making a case for market research, especially without a sound method to calculate marketing research ROI, is challenging.

However, when you've compiled all of your research and data from across departments and offices into a single UX research repository, you have a tangible product you can use to help you justify additional marketing research requests, as necessary.

What is included in a UX research repository?

In a well-organized UX research repository, you'll typically find the raw research data collected from internal or external sources, surveys, or studies. That data may include everything from survey responses to timed task results.

Keeping all of this data is important, as it allows you to defend any conclusions you may have reached. Further, maintaining it in an organized and searchable format will help you leverage the raw data in new studies as needed.

Additionally, you'll have your quantitative and qualitative research studies in your repository. They should be organized, searchable, and easily accessible across your organization.

Of course, you should maintain strict controls over who can make changes to these documents and place restrictions on sharing outside your company. But for those who have permission, your UX research repository should be as easy to use as possible.

You should also include observations and conclusions from evaluating your UX repository's content. When you've completed and uploaded multiple research projects and data sets, you'll undoubtedly find some interesting insights by periodically reviewing and analyzing your UX research repository's contents.

And when you conduct a meta-analysis or systemic review of your repository's content, preserve that as well. You'll want to save those insights for future reference so that others can build on that work.

Finally, incorporate data analysis tools into your repository. Many platforms, like Dovetail, include data analysis tools that allow you to evaluate, visualize, and synthesize the raw data in your repository. And some companies that custom-build their own repositories incorporate such tools.

To maximize its utility, you'll want to incorporate such tools or use platforms with built-in tools that allow repository users to analyze data and engage in further research.

How to start building a UX research repository

Building a UX research repository is not as simple as dumping all of your files into a shared folder. An effective repository should be organized, searchable, and regularly updated, which requires some upfront and ongoing work.

1. Determine what platform you should use to store your data

Consider your data and research and what you expect to generate over time. Ask whether the platform you consider is easily scalable and includes easy ways to share the insights you've gathered.

2. Assign who is building and managing your repository

If you're appointing a team, clearly delineate who is responsible for what to avoid duplicative efforts and mistakes.

3. Decide how you'll organize your data

Determine what your classification system will be, keeping current and future needs in mind, as well as access controls.

4. Create the appropriate taxonomy

Appropriate tags are critical to ensuring your repository is organized and searchable. Tagging, in particular, can make it easier for team members to find helpful and relevant information, even if they don't have a precise search query in mind.

After you've uploaded and organized your existing data into your fledgling repository, you'll want to include a summary of the findings and data in the repository. Though you'll need to update it regularly, this summary will help team members understand what is inside at a glance, making it more user-friendly and facilitating adoption across your organization. And by synthesizing your repository into a single report can often lead to additional avenues for exploration or insights.

How to maximize the value of a UX research repository in your organization

Of course, the value of a repository is determined by how many of your colleagues use it, how easy they find it to use, and how effectively they can use it to find existing and generate new insights. And many teams can be slow to adopt and regularly incorporate new applications and resources into their work. However, you can increase the likelihood your repository will be widely used with the following tips:

1. Communicate with stakeholders about the repository before and while you build it

Ensure you incorporate feedback from your team along the way to ensure you're designing a repository tailored to their needs.

2. Keep repository organized and up-to-date

One of the primary benefits of a repository is that you can easily find research conducted across the organization. But if your colleagues are still needing to request specific reports from individual departments, your repository will be less useful and consequently see less use. Ensure that every department is uploading research across the organization to maximize its utility.

3. Incorporate data analysis and visualization tools

The best repositories can inspire additional research. And when your colleagues can quickly evaluate and synthesize the data you've gathered across studies in new ways, your repository will help generate new lines of inquiry.

4. Choose the right platform to begin with

Custom-built platforms can take time and resources you likely don't have. But when you use Dovetail, you can easily migrate existing data, use a flexible and scalable business taxonomy and tagging system, and easily share insights with your colleagues across departments.

Dovetail also offers multiple templates to make migration and organization easy, as well as access controls to share information appropriately. If you're looking for a platform that makes building and managing a UX repository easy, contact us for a free demo.

FAQs about UX research repository tools

How does a ux research repository differ from a regular database.

Unlike a regular database, a UX research repository is tailored to house user-centered data, focusing on insights gathered from user research activities.

Can a small design team benefit from a UX research repository?

Absolutely! A UX research repository enhances collaboration and decision-making, which are valuable for teams of all sizes.

Is a UX research repository suitable for remote teams?

Yes, a repository facilitates seamless collaboration for remote teams by providing a centralized platform accessible from anywhere.

What is the role of data security in a UX research repository?

Data security is paramount. Access controls ensure that sensitive information is shared only with authorized individuals.

How frequently should a UX research repository be updated?

Regular updates are essential to maintain the relevance of the repository. Aim for consistent additions as new insights are gathered.

Are there any free tools available for creating a UX research repository?

Yes, some tools offer free plans with basic features. Notion and Confluence have free versions that can be a great starting point.

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Repositories - research from universities, online: What is a repository?

• What is a repository?
• How to search repositories
• Some recommended repositories

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Quick links: repository search engines

A repository is a free online collection of documents, often scholarly. There are several kinds:

• repositories maintained by a single university , for its own students' dissertations and theses, and/or its own staff's published research. This often includes versions of papers published in scholarly journals
• repositories maintained by museums
• repositories focussing on a particular kind of material , such as grey literature, from many sources
• general repositories , with very large and diverse collections

Please note:

When a journal article is included in a repository, it will often not be identical to the published version. It may be an earlier version, before final corrections were made for publication. The same may apply to some other kinds of material. So if citing an item from a depository in an assignment, please ensure you make clear which version you have consulted. The SIA librarians can help if necessary.

Much material in repositories is available in full, but sometimes you will only have access to a citation (a brief description) instead of the whole text.

• Next: How to search repositories >>
• Last Updated: Feb 12, 2024 5:08 AM
• URL: https://sia.libguides.com/repositories

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Recommended Repositories

All data, software and code underlying reported findings should be deposited in appropriate public repositories, unless already provided as part of the article. Repositories may be either subject-specific repositories that accept specific types of structured data and/or software, or cross-disciplinary generalist repositories that accept multiple data and/or software types.

If field-specific standards for data or software deposition exist, PLOS requires authors to comply with these standards. Authors should select repositories appropriate to their field of study (for example, ArrayExpress or GEO for microarray data; GenBank, EMBL, or DDBJ for gene sequences). PLOS has identified a set of established repositories, listed below, that are recognized and trusted within their respective communities. PLOS does not dictate repository selection for the data availability policy.

For further information on environmental and biomedical science repositories and field standards, we suggest utilizing FAIRsharing . Additionally, the Registry of Research Data Repositories ( Re3Data ) is a full scale resource of registered data repositories across subject areas. Both FAIRsharing and Re3Data provide information on an array of criteria to help researchers identify the repositories most suitable for their needs (e.g., licensing, certificates and standards, policy, etc.).

If no specialized community-endorsed public repository exists, institutional repositories that use open licenses permitting free and unrestricted use or public domain, and that adhere to best practices pertaining to responsible sharing, sustainable digital preservation, proper citation, and openness are also suitable for deposition.

If authors use repositories with stated licensing policies, the policies should not be more restrictive than the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license .

Cross-disciplinary repositories

• Dryad Digital Repository
• Harvard Dataverse Network
• Network Data Exchange (NDEx)
• Open Science Framework

Repositories by type

Biochemistry.

*Data entered in the STRENDA DB submission form are automatically checked for compliance and receive a fact sheet PDF with warnings for any missing information.

Biomedical Sciences

Marine sciences.

• SEA scieNtific Open data Edition (SEANOE)

Model Organisms

Neuroscience.

• Functional Connectomes Project International Neuroimaging Data-Sharing Initiative (FCP/INDI)
• German Neuroinformatics Node/G-Node (GIN)
• NeuroMorpho.org

Physical Sciences

Social sciences.

• Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
• Qualitative Data Repository
• UK Data Service

Structural Databases

Taxonomic & species diversity, unstructured and/or large data.

PLOS would like to thank the Open Access Nature Publishing Group journal,  Scientific Data , for their own  list of recommended repositories .

Repository Criteria

The list of repositories above is not exhaustive and PLOS encourages the use of any repository that meet the following criteria:

Dataset submissions should be open to all researchers whose research fits the scientific scope of the repository. PLOS’ list does not include repositories that place geographical or affiliation restrictions on submission of datasets.

Repositories must assign a stable persistent identifier (PID) for each dataset at publication, such as a digital object identifier (DOI) or an accession number.

• Repositories must provide the option for data to be available under  CC0  or  CC BY  licenses (or equivalents that are no less restrictive). Specifically, there must be no restrictions on derivative works or commercial use.
• Repositories should make datasets available to any interested readers at no cost, and with no registration requirements that unnecessarily restrict access to data. PLOS will not recommend repositories that charge readers access fees or subscription fees.
• Repositories must have a long-term data management plan (including funding) to ensure that datasets are maintained for the foreseeable future.
• Repositories should demonstrate acceptance and usage within the relevant research community, for example, via use of the repository for data deposition for multiple published articles.
• Repositories should have an entry in  FAIRsharing.org  to allow it to be linked to the  PLOS entry .

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Generalist repository examples

In areas where well-established subject or data-type specific repositories exist, we ask authors to submit their data to the appropriate resources. If there are no discipline-specific repositories suitable for your data, we are glad to support the use of generalist repositories. 

The example generalist repositories listed below are able to accept data from all researchers, regardless of location or funding source. If your institution, funder, project, or nation has its own generalist data repository, you may wish to use this instead. Authors may also wish to explore repository registries such as  FAIRsharing.org and re3data.org .

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