My favourite research report structures of the moment

Simple versus complex answers

In this structure, I basically separate the simple stuff from the complex stuff. Here is how it looks like:

• Summary: a summary in one slide of the most important points. Usually, I try to pack it in one sentence and have three small paragraphs for three main points.
• Answers
  • Simple answers: elements from the research where we can give clear answers that are like yes/no and don't need much more discussion.
  • Complex answers: elements from the research where the answer is something like: "it depends", and where we need to share more details, context and time in synthesis
• Methodology: I sometimes also send this part as a separate presentation
  • Research question: what was the initial research question or goal and why this project started
  • Method followed: show how rigorous (or not) your approach is
  • Limitations: share the limitations, biases and dangers of this research and report
• Summary: the same slide as at the beginning repeated

Q&A

In this structure, I take the different questions that the team asks itself and give for each question an answer.

• Summary: a summary in one slide of the most important points. Usually, I try to pack it in one sentence and have three small paragraphs for three main points.
• Question 1
  • Summary in one slide
  • Details in as few slides as necessary
• Question 2
  • Summary in one slide
  • Details in as few slides as necessary
• Question 3
  • Summary in one slide
  • Details in as few slides as necessary
• Methodology: I sometimes also send this part as a separate presentation
  • Research question: what was the initial research question or goal and why this project started
  • Method followed: show how rigorous (or not) your approach is
  • Limitations: share the limitations, biases and dangers of this research and report
• Summary: the same slide as at the beginning repeated

Other presentations structures I recommend

This is one way of doing it, but there are many others. I've written a tiny guide of presentation structures that might help to go further: "What are good storylines I can use to structure a presentation?"

Discover the presentation structures

What the experts say

The people from the platform User Interviews have written a pretty in-depth guide called "Writing UX Research Reports and Presentations" which can be inspiring for many other practices like Service Design.