Make Research Reusable: How to Build a User Research Repository

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Make Research Reusable: How to Build a User Research Repository

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In our last few lessons, we’ve been building out the ecosystem that supports a scalable UX strategy. We’ve covered services, tools, design systems, and even preferred suppliers. But there’s one more piece of infrastructure that can have a surprisingly big impact; your user research repository.

If you want to empower others to take on UX work without losing too much quality, you need to give them a solid foundation to build on. That means they shouldn’t have to start from scratch every time they run a project. And they certainly shouldn’t have to repeat the same user research over and over again just because nobody saved the results.

That’s where your repository comes in.

What a UX Repository Actually Is

At its core, this is simply a central, searchable place to store past user research. Not just what you have done, but what anyone across the organization has conducted.

This could include:

Personas or audience segmentation
Journey maps
Surveys and interview transcripts
Usability testing results
Analytics insights, heatmaps, and recordings
Notes from field studies or observational research

It’s your institutional memory. A UX library, if you like.

Why It Matters

A well-managed research repository offers a ton of practical benefits:

Saves time and budget by avoiding repeated research
Improves consistency in how decisions are made
Reveals patterns and trends across multiple teams or time periods
Encourages adoption by making research feel more accessible and less mysterious

And just as importantly, it gives your colleagues the confidence to use research in their own projects. When people know they’re not starting from a blank page, they’re far more likely to engage.

What to Include (and How to Organize It)

You’ll want to organize your repository around two primary themes:

Audience Research

This includes everything related to your user groups:

Personas (or audience profiles)
Journey maps
Survey results
Interview transcripts

Service Research

This is about specific products or experiences:

Task completion insights
Usability testing results
Analytics dashboards
Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity recordings
Conversion funnel analyses

Use tags and categories to make these easy to find. Things like project names, audience types, dates, and tools used.

You’ll also want to note the age of the research. Outdated insights can be misleading, so having a simple “last updated” or “research date” field is a big help.

Tools That Can Help

There are purpose-built platforms like Condens or Dovetail that do this well. But if budgets are tight, a shared Notion workspace or Microsoft Teams library can work just fine, what matters most is that it’s:

Easy to search
Clearly structured
Openly accessible (with appropriate privacy controls)

Don’t Forget Recruitment

Related to the repository, there’s another simple asset that can massively speed up research across your organization: a user mailing list.

Maintaining a list of users who’ve opted in to participate in testing, interviews, or surveys can save hours every time someone wants to run a study. You can build this list by:

Including a research opt-in checkbox on forms or newsletters
Promoting it in email footers or product dashboards
Asking customer service teams to flag helpful users

In large orgs, you may need to gate access so users aren’t bombarded. But in smaller teams, making the list available to trusted colleagues can really encourage adoption.

Outie’s Aside

If you’re running a freelance practice or small agency, this applies just as much to you. But instead of organizing internal research, think about what you can package up for clients.

You could:

Compile insights from previous similar clients into a reference deck
Offer templated journey maps or personas as part of a discovery phase
Maintain your own user panel for fast, lightweight testing on behalf of clients

Over time, this builds intellectual property that adds value to your services. It also makes you faster and more credible in the eyes of prospective clients because you’re not just winging it. You’re bringing tested insights and proven patterns to the table.

The Takeaway

If you're serious about scaling your UX influence, a research repository and user mailing list aren’t just “nice to haves.” They’re part of the invisible infrastructure that lets good UX practice flourish without your constant involvement.

We’ll talk more next time about how to keep quality high as more people start running their own research. Because empowering people is one thing ensuring they do it well is another.

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