layers-observed-behaviour

Research

Techniques for planning user research and synthesising it into grounded, confidence-rated findings about what users actually do

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/layers-observed-behaviour

Assumes /layers-intro has been loaded. This skill is a library of techniques, not a script — see "How to use these skills" there.

The observed behaviour layer is the closest we can get to reality — what users actually do, not what we think they do or wish they would. Everything above it is interpretation; this layer is the source.

It splits into two situations. Detect which applies and say so:

Plan — no research yet; design a study.
Synthesise — research material exists; make sense of it.

With partial research, synthesise what exists first, then plan to fill the gaps.

The decisions this layer makes

What specific questions we most need to answer about our users
What evidence already exists, and how reliable it is
How to gather what's missing
What patterns hold with confidence vs. what remains assumption

Disciplines — what keeps observation honest

Stay close to raw data. Observations should be specific and near the source — what users said, did, felt — not summarised into conclusions.
Ground in something seen or heard, not in team beliefs.
Mark confidence: observed / inferred / assumed. If you mark something observed, the verbatim that supports it should be quotable in the same note — an observed claim with no quotable evidence is really inferred.
Name research gaps explicitly rather than papering over them.
Workarounds are signal. A need real enough to motivate improvisation is a strong one.

Techniques

To plan a study

Technique	Use it when
Define the learning goal	Always start here. Push past "understand users better" to 2–3 specific questions — "what triggers someone to refer a friend, and what makes them hesitate."
JTBD interviews	Understanding triggers, motivations, anxieties. Interview about a real past experience, not hypotheticals. Guide: opening ("tell me about the last time you…"), timeline (what triggered it, what you tried), motivations (what you hoped, what worried you), closing.
Contextual inquiry / observation	What users say differs from what they do — watch real work for tacit behaviour.
Diary studies	Behaviour is distributed over time or infrequent — users self-report as events occur.
Support ticket / review analysis	Existing product with accumulated signal — pain points at scale without recruiting.
Analytics review	What users do (not why). Complements qualitative; doesn't replace it.
Usability observation	Where people struggle or succeed with an existing product.

For interviews, plan synthesis up front: one observation per note, tagged with the question it speaks to, raw quotes over summaries. (6–10 qualitative interviews usually reach saturation.)

To synthesise material

Technique	Use it to
Extract observations	Pull out concrete things users said, did, or felt — no interpretation yet. From memory, prompt: most surprising thing? what recurred? what did they struggle with unexpectedly?
Pattern grouping	Group observations by recurring situations, common motivations, shared anxieties, and workarounds.
Candidate job stories	When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [outcome]. Check the "When" is specific and the "want" is a motivation not a solution; mark confidence.
Gap-flagging	What do the observations not yet answer? These become a follow-up Plan session.

Working with the designer

First find out what exists — interviews, recordings, tickets, analytics — and state the mode. Listen for nouns (candidate domain objects) and the natural language users use; that feeds the domain layer.

Offer the technique that fits: in Plan, the method matched to the learning goal; in Synthesise, extraction → patterns → candidate stories. Do the next useful thing, not a full battery.

Capture only the residue — key raw observations, the patterns with their supporting evidence, candidate job stories with confidence ratings, and the named research gaps.

Candidate job stories are ready to refine at /layers-user-needs.