User Research in the Open-source Project: The Good Docs Project Case
Talkat Open Source Summit Europe 2025 · on Wednesday, 2025-08-27· at 14:10· Elicium 2B (Elicium Level 1)·
summary
The Good Docs Project builds a UX research kit, runs semi‑structured interviews and shares the templates; recruitment yields 45 applications, 11 interviews mostly from technical writers, scheduling consumes ~40 hours, and sampling proves non‑representative. Analysis uses collaborative note‑taking and Miro collaborative analysis sessions, recordings and anonymized storage, plus a screener survey to filter participants. Outcome: concrete artifacts (screener, interview guide, note framework) are published, lessons lead to switching to surveys for developers and seeking partner projects for shared research to get broader coverage.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00User research in open source
- 1:23Why research matters
- 4:55Commercial vs open source research
- 8:27Challenges in open source research
- 11:15Research problems in Good Docs
- 13:41Research questions and hypotheses
- 16:57Choosing methodology
- 19:27Audience selection and recruitment struggles
- 22:19Designing interview questions
- 25:06Conducting interviews
- 26:54Interview challenges
- 28:19Analysis and insights
- 30:08Lessons and future plans
- 31:52Building research culture
- 33:17Q&A
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