Analyze research~60 min

Analyze Research: Synthesis With Receipts

Early preview draft — not yet practitioner or accessibility reviewed.
Goal
Practice synthesis a skeptic can audit: findings that trace to sources, uncertainty that's labeled instead of smoothed over, and an explicit account of what would change your mind.
Scenario
Gather 4-6 public sources on one design question you care about (articles, talks, published studies — real ones, linked). Synthesize them into findings a team could act on — with the receipts attached.
Audience
A skeptical lead who checks one citation at random and drops the whole synthesis if it doesn't hold.
Constraints
Every finding must cite which source(s) support it. Every finding carries a confidence label (solid / suggestive / thin) with one sentence of why. Sources must be linked and public.
Deliverable
The synthesis: 3-5 findings, each with citations and a confidence label; one paragraph on where the sources disagree (or a note that they suspiciously don't); one privacy/ethics consideration the question raises; and a "what would change my mind" line per finding — the failure state of your own conclusion.
Counts on your evidence profile as
A completed Skill Lab with its rubric and your deliverable
Accessibility requirement
Findings must be written in plain language — synthesis that only specialists can read hasn't finished the job.
AI policy
AI use is allowed in a limited way for this lab — see details below. AI may help cluster notes; every citation link between finding and source must be verified by you against the source, and the confidence labels are your judgment, not a model's.
Rubric
  • Receipts check out: A spot-checked citation actually supports the finding it's attached to — paraphrase drift and cherry-picking fail here.
  • Uncertainty is differentiated: Not all findings share one confidence label, or if they do, the why-sentences justify it — uniform confidence is the tell of unexamined synthesis.
  • Falsifiability is real: Each what-would-change-my-mind line names observable evidence, not "more data" — the author knows what their conclusion is exposed to.
Resources

Skills: Research Synthesis, Stakeholder Communication

Relevant to: UX Designer, UX Researcher

Your work

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