A user research database to help product teams take action on feedback

Product teams are always on the lookout for ways to improve the product, and often, they find answers by listening to users.

User research provides the context and perspective for everything you do, ensuring you create impactful features and remove points of friction. It’s a never-ending process of asking questions, listening, and taking action based on the opinions and experience of the people actually using your product.

Without a system to collect, reference, and execute on what you learn from users, you risk wasting time and resources building the wrong thing, or fixing what isn’t broken.

Using this Notion database, you’ll have one place for all your user research, where you can organize it based on your needs, and connect the dots between this research and the projects they impact.

To get started recording user research, you can copy this template straight into your workspace, and customize it however you like.

To create your user feedback database, make a new page inside your product team’s wiki using the / command. In the menu that appears, choose Table - Full page and rename it “User Research” (you can also add an emoji to make it stand out if you like).

All the information in a database is organized by properties. Database properties allow you to categorize each database entry, and they can be customized based on the needs of that database. This gives you a high-level view of the most important information about each database entry — like the person responsible for the project, the type of project, and its timeline.  Learn more about all the database properties available in Notion here.

Open the Properties menu at the top of the table and click Add a property to add a new one. When you add a new property, you can rename it and select what type of property you want from the list. Whether you want to know the user’s location, the length of your interview with them, or the topic discussed, properties help you customize how information in your database is categorized.

These are some properties you’ll want to include in your user research database:

• Name — edit the Title property, and call it "Name." This is where you will enter the name of each user.

• Email — add an Email property so you can enter the user’s email address. If you want to send them an email at any time, you can click on the @ symbol, and this will open up a new email.

• Phone number — add a Phone property where you can type the user’s phone number, handy for interviews so you're not digging around last minute.

• Interviewer — by adding a Person property, you can tag the team member who conducted the interview. This will help you see which team members have conducted the most interviews.

• Date — add a Date property to enter the date that the conversation took place.

• Product feature — use a Select property to identify which feature the feedback refers to, so you can understand at a glance what the conversation is about. You can start typing in the column to create new tags.

• Status — add another Select property to assign a status to the feedback. Creating tags like “Contacted,” “Scheduled,” “Completed,” or “Cancelled” will let everyone know whether the interview has taken place.

• Completion time - you could add a Number property to show the duration of the interview.

You can add as many properties as you like to capture all the information your product team needs. Each one is totally customizable, so as your team adds features, reaches back out to certain users, or improves processes, these properties can change based on the types of interviews your team is conducting.

Every item in the database opens up to become its own, fully customizable Notion page. Inside this page, you can store details of the user interview, including evidence of bugs, observations from the interviewer, and any action items that need to be taken care of.

Just start typing, or hit / to bring up the menu of blocks that you can add to a page. Everything in a Notion page is a block, and we have a full guide to all the different types of blocks you can choose from. For now, though, here are a few you’ll find useful:

• Text — choose Text to start writing with plain text. You can type up notes from your interview, including the user feedback and any comments from the interviewer.

• Bullets — select Bulleted list to organize your notes in a scannable format.

• Checklist — use a To-do list to list out any action items, or make sure certain questions were asked.

• Headings — add h1s, h2s, and h3s to separate the different sections of your page.

• Media