Fueling Your Product Strategy with Qualitative Research

Welcome, Context, and Housekeeping

Rina Alexin | 00:00–04:45
Hello everyone, welcome and good morning. My name is Rina Alexin, and I’m the CEO of Productside. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

I’m really excited about today’s topic: Fueling Your Product Strategy with Qualitative Research. I’m also delighted to introduce our speaker, Colleen O’Rourke.

Colleen is a principal consultant and trainer at Productside. She has over 20 years of experience in technology, working in engineering, program management, and product management, in companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500. She’s also currently a student at UC Merced, working on a PhD in the management of complex systems.

Thank you so much for being here today, Colleen.

Colleen O’Rourke | 04:00–04:10
It’s my pleasure, Rina. Always great to be here.

Rina Alexin | 04:10–04:45
This is actually our first webinar together, which makes it extra fun. We have a lot to cover, but first let me walk through some housekeeping.

After this webinar, we encourage you to stay engaged with the product management community. One great way is by joining our LinkedIn group. You can use it as a forum to share best practices and tips, and to network with your peers. We’ll be pasting the URL in the chat box shortly.

At Productside, we really love questions. Please, at any time throughout the webinar, post your questions and comments using the chat box to your right. We’ll leave time for Q&A at the end, and when possible, we’ll bring your questions into the conversation during the webinar as well.

And I’ll answer our most popular question right away: “Can I watch this later?”
Yes — all attendees will receive a link to the recording after the webinar has ended.

About Productside & the Leadership Series

Rina Alexin | 04:45–07:10
Before we dive into the main content, I’d like to introduce Productside briefly and explain the focus of our Product Management Leadership Webinar Series.

At Productside, our whole goal is to empower product professionals with the knowledge and tools to build products that matter — products that delight your customers and achieve measurable business results.

We apply over 20 years of product management best practices and principles to our own suite of services. Whether you’re:

looking to optimize your product management process,

seeking foundational or advanced training, or

needing coaching for your team,

we’re here to help.

Now, what is the Product Management Leadership Webinar Series about? We interviewed many of your peers to come up with a series of topics that can help you grow as a product management leader and help you develop your team. Our ultimate goal is to help you enable your team and your company to build better products.

Today’s series theme is “How to develop my team”, whether that’s through people practices or tools.

Looking at today’s audience, as usual we see a lot of product managers and product marketers — around 50%. About 18% of you are directors or VPs, and a great number fall into the “other” category, which is often people who are looking to get into product management.

Welcome — this is a great topic for everyone who’s joining us.

Rina Alexin | 07:10–07:30
With that, I’ll hand it over to Colleen to talk about qualitative research.

What We Mean by Qualitative Research

Colleen O’Rourke | 07:30–11:20
Thanks, Rina.

We’re going to cover three main areas today:

Elements of qualitative research – what it actually consists of.

Phases of performing qualitative research – and the documentation that goes with each phase.

Applying the insights you get from qualitative research back into your product strategy.

This webinar is really about how to wrangle and process the vast amounts of data you get from qualitative research, and how to feed that back into strategy.

We’re not going to cover:

how to perform interviews,

how to facilitate focus groups, or

how to design research studies from scratch.

We do have a blog on that topic, and an upcoming webinar focused specifically on voice-of-the-customer interviews.

Rina Alexin | 11:20–11:45
That’s right. We’ll be pasting a link to download our Voice of the Customer template that you can use for VOC research. And if you stay tuned to the end of this webinar, we’ll introduce next week’s webinar topic, which is all about voice-of-the-customer interviews.

Colleen O’Rourke | 11:45–13:15
Perfect. So when I say qualitative research, what do I mean?

At a high level, qualitative research is about the story.

It’s the quotes.

It’s the “jobs to be done” context.

It’s the messy, human, emotional, situational detail behind your customers’ behavior.

There are formal ways of doing this — interviews, focus groups, usability studies, ethnographic research. But I want to emphasize that qualitative research also includes any time you’re on a sales call or a support call.

If you are interacting with customers, you are gathering qualitative data — the question is whether you capture and use it.

Common Challenges with Qualitative Data

Colleen O’Rourke & Rina Alexin | 13:15–18:20

Colleen | 13:15–14:10
We’re going to start with a quick poll. I’d like to know: What are your biggest challenges with qualitative research data?

Options include:

Too much information

Contradicting data

Key insights not shared across the organization

Not sure how many interviews you need

Not sure what information is important to capture

Please select all that apply.

Rina | 14:10–15:25
The poll is launched. Go ahead and vote. You can select multiple answers.

From what I’m seeing so far, the audience definitely agrees with you, Colleen — these are very real challenges. We’ll leave the poll open just a few more seconds.

Rina | 15:25–16:30
Okay, let’s close the poll and share the results.

About 22% said “Too much information.”

Around 52% said “Data can be contradicting.”

Between 40–50% chose the other issues as well:

insights not shared,

not sure how many interviews to do,

not sure what to capture.

So the pain is pretty evenly spread.

Colleen | 16:30–18:20
That’s great — not that you have the problems, but that we’re going to talk about all of them today.

These challenges often lead to three outcomes:

Superficial analysis
You talk to one person, their story really resonates with you, and you think “I get it, that’s the problem!” Then you run off to solve it — even though it may not be representative of your broader market.

Piles of data, no insight
You do lots of interviews, you have recordings and transcripts and notes everywhere, but nobody is extracting actual insights from them. People “babble around” the topic, but nothing sharp comes out.

Findings that aren’t actionable
You might get observations, but they don’t translate into decisions, priorities, or strategy changes. So you end up with wasted time or even misdirected product strategy.

These are really common problems. Even when I know what I’m doing with qualitative work, I still hit those moments. That’s usually a signal that I need to stay with the project longer and keep working through the material.

Why Qualitative Research Is Strategic, Not Just Tactical

Colleen O’Rourke | 18:20–23:00
A lot of people think of qualitative research only in terms of features. You run a focus group, test a design, tighten a specific interaction — and that’s it.

But as product managers, qualitative research has to start way earlier, at the level of product strategy.

You can’t:

do meaningful needs-based segmentation,

create robust personas,

design realistic customer journeys, or

build strong messaging and positioning

without understanding the story behind your customers: their context, motivations, constraints, and emotional drivers.

Quantitative data and qualitative data are two sides of the same coin:

The quantitative tells you what is happening, to whom, and how often.

The qualitative helps you understand why — and what it means.

As UX teams, they might focus more on the feature-level details. But as product managers and product marketers, we have to zoom out. We have to use qualitative insights throughout the entire strategy stack.

And as Rina pointed out, if you’re struggling to articulate a clear lens for your qualitative research, it’s often a sign your product strategy isn’t well-aligned to the business strategy. This is a great opportunity to step back and reconnect your work with business goals.

The Three Elements of Qualitative Research

Colleen O’Rourke & Rina Alexin | 23:00–29:10

Colleen | 23:00–26:00
There are three essential elements of qualitative research:

Conversation

Interviews, focus groups, VOC calls.

Open-ended questions, stories, feelings, frustrations, aspirations.

This is the part most of us are familiar with.

Observation

Watching customers work with your product or within their normal environment.

Noticing what they actually do versus what they say they do.

This can be in person, on Zoom, or through structured shadowing.

Sometimes I’ll join meetings purely as an observer. I introduce myself, then turn off my camera — even the picture — so people forget I’m there. That gives me a very different view of how they actually behave and interact.

Artifacts

Documents, spreadsheets, diagrams, screenshots, photos, whiteboard sketches, workflows.

Anything they draw or share that represents how they work or think.

These artifacts give you concrete examples and help you corroborate what you’re hearing in conversation and seeing in observation.

Rina | 26:00–29:10
Right — and artifacts are also how you catch inconsistencies or confusion.

For example, if multiple users say they’re using a tool one way, but the artifacts show different, inconsistent usage, that’s a clue:

Maybe the UX is confusing,

Maybe the training is weak,

Or maybe there’s a mismatch between what they think they’re doing and what’s really happening.

Similarly, emotion codes — frustration, delight, anxiety — are some of the most powerful signals in qualitative data. They often point directly at the most important problems to solve.

The Three Phases of Qualitative Documentation

Colleen O’Rourke & Rina Alexin | 29:10–36:40

Colleen | 29:10–33:20
Let’s talk about documentation. One reason qualitative work feels overwhelming is that people don’t realize there are three different phases, each with its own type of documentation:

Phase 1 — Capturing the data (Field Notes)

You’re in front of the customer, listening, observing, collecting artifacts.

You capture direct quotes, observations, timestamps, screenshots, photos.

This is raw source data.

Phase 2 — Extracting insights (Coding & Theming)

You take the raw data and start assigning codes to fragments: short labels that describe what that piece of data is about.

Then you group codes into themes to surface patterns.

Phase 3 — Synthesizing the results

You write up clear, concise findings and recommended actions.

This is what you share broadly with stakeholders, not your messy Phase 1 and Phase 2 work.

If you mix these phases together, everything feels chaotic. When you separate them, the process becomes manageable and repeatable.

Rina | 33:20–36:40
We launched another poll around documentation, and the answers showed a mix:

Some of you regularly share findings and post them to shared locations,

Some feed findings into product strategy updates,

And a good chunk said they just have a notebook with ideas “around here somewhere,”

And a quarter basically said, “What documentation?”

What you’re describing, Colleen, helps clarify that different artifacts belong at different levels. Executives don’t want field notes; they want Phase 3 synthesis. But product teams can benefit from the Phase 2 coding and theming — as long as it’s readable.

Phase 1: Field Notes & Confidentiality

Colleen O’Rourke & Rina Alexin | 36:40–42:40

Colleen | 36:40–40:30
Phase 1 is all about field notes.

In an ideal world, your notes would be very clean:

Date and time

Participants

Context (sales call, support call, interview, site visit)

Key quotes, clearly marked

Observations

References to artifacts

Timestamps into the recording (e.g., “Q @ 15:40”)

In reality, my notebooks are often messy. I’ll run out of space and start adding Post-its, scribbling arrows, circling things, writing “!!” next to something interesting.

That’s okay — as long as you rewrite them within 24 hours. If you wait two or three days, you lose the nuance, and your exclamation points no longer make sense. In academic research, if you don’t rewrite and clean your notes within 24 hours, they don’t even count as data.

So treat “rewrite within 24 hours” as a hard rule.

Colleen | 40:30–42:10
The other crucial part of Phase 1 is confidentiality. Field notes often contain:

names,

company details,

sensitive internal information.

I once did onsite research at an organization. They gave me a cubicle, and I left my notebook — full of interviews with executives — sitting on the desk while I went to the bathroom. My laptop was locked, but the notebook was just sitting there.

Nothing happened, but it was a wake-up call. Now I use a smaller notebook that fits in my bag, and I carry it with me everywhere. I never leave it behind.

Rina | 42:10–42:40
Mistakes can happen, but do everything you can to prevent them. Treat customer notes like sensitive data — because they are.

Phase 2: Coding & Theming (With Examples)

Colleen O’Rourke & Rina Alexin | 42:40–57:30

Colleen | 42:40–48:10
Phase 2 is where the magic happens: coding and theming.

Coding means:

Taking a small fragment of your field notes or transcript,

Asking: “What is this really about?”

Assigning one or more short labels — codes — that describe it.

Codes are like powerful tags or keywords. Later, you can:

search by code,

group related fragments,

see frequencies and patterns.

For product work, I often use codes such as:

“product process”

“success metrics”

“strategy”

“authority”

“access to customers”

“cross-functional coordination”

emotional codes like “frustration,” “fear,” “confusion”

plus role codes, like “PM,” “Exec,” “Dev,” “Support”

You can do this in a Word document using comments, or use specialized software like NVivo if you have a lot of data and a large distributed team.

Rina | 48:10–49:15
Do you try to standardize codes so others can reuse them? And is there such a thing as too many codes on one quote?

Colleen | 49:15–52:00
Great question.

Yes — over time, you want a shared, consistent set of codes, especially if multiple people are coding. You can:

Start with a small list of core codes,

Let the team add new ones as needed,

Keep a simple reference list everyone can see.

On “too many codes”: it’s okay if a rich quote has multiple codes. Just make sure each code is meaningful and you’re not tagging everything with everything.

And yes, emotional codes are crucial. Customers often express the most important problems through emotion — frustration, anxiety, delight.

Colleen | 52:00–57:30
After coding individual interviews, I then:

Group coded fragments for each person
For example, I’ll pull all the “product process” codes for one interview, including:

quotes,

observations,

relevant artifacts.

From those, I start forming themes for that person, like:

“Confusion from lack of product process”

“Authority issues around prioritization”

“Ad hoc product maturity”

Look across many respondents
I then aggregate themes across multiple interviews:

Which themes repeat?

Which ones are outliers?

Is this just one person’s issue, or a systemic pattern?

For example, I once heard a PM say they had 7 or 8 scrum teams they were driving. That sounded extreme, so we went back and added more interviews with other PMs to see if it was widespread. It turned out that overload was specific to one department, which changed our recommendations significantly.

Combine codes for deeper insights
The real power comes when you start combining codes:

“product process” + “role” (Exec vs PM vs Dev)

“communication” + “department”

Looking at differences in perception across groups

You can also zoom out across an entire market segment or customer base and see patterns by persona or segment.

Throughout this, I like using a mind-mapping tool (I use SimpleMind) to:

pull in key data fragments,

group them under codes,

evolve them into themes,

visually see where the “energy” is in the map — the branches with lots of text and emotion.

At this stage, Phase 2 feels messy and subjective. There’s always a moment where I think, “I’ll never find the pattern.” If you keep going, there’s always a point where it suddenly clicks and the themes become clear.

Phase 3: Synthesizing Insights & Updating Strategy

Colleen O’Rourke | 57:30–01:05:30
Once themes are solid and supported by multiple coded fragments, we move into Phase 3: synthesis.

This is where you:

Turn themes into clear insights (“Executives equate agile with product process and are confused about decision ownership.”)

Add evidence (how many customers, which segments, key quotes or stories).

Translate insights into recommendations and actions.

Phase 3 output might look like:

A presentation for your leadership team,

A strategy memo summarizing findings,

A quarterly customer insights digest shared across the organization.

This is also where you explicitly tie insights back into your product strategy components, such as:

Market segmentation

Personas and roles

Problem scenarios and use cases

Customer journeys

Messaging and positioning

Business cases

For example, from the earlier theme around confusion about “agile” as a product process, you might:

Add an executive persona with its own pain points,

Update your problem scenarios to include “organizational misunderstanding of agile,”

Adjust your business case to highlight the impact of better process and decision clarity on customer lifetime value.

The critical thing is traceability: from a strategic decision back to:

the themes that support it,

the codes that feed those themes,

and the original quotes, observations, and artifacts.

That’s what gives your qualitative insights credibility, especially with executives.

How Much Research Is Enough? And Other Final Thoughts

Colleen O’Rourke & Rina Alexin | 01:05:30–01:12:15

Colleen | 01:05:30–01:09:30
“How much is enough?” is a common question. There’s no magic number, but some guidelines:

Within a well-defined market segment, keep interviewing until you start hearing the same patterns repeatedly — that’s called saturation.

Test the boundaries of your segment by talking to some edge cases or outliers and see whether their needs are truly different.

Remember: qualitative research is like competitive analysis — it’s never completely done. Customers and markets keep changing.

Work cross-functionally whenever you can. Invite marketing, UX, support, sales, and engineering to join interviews, help code, or review themes. It makes your insights richer and alignment easier.

Qualitative work is subjective, and that can feel uncomfortable — especially for those of us with engineering backgrounds. Over time, as you practice and keep your strategic lens clear, you build confidence in your judgment.

And always, always maintain confidentiality.

Rina | 01:09:30–01:12:15
Colleen also created a Customer Site Visit Canvas — a one-page template you can use to capture the most important insights from a call or visit. It’s perfect for those times when you join a sales call or support call and don’t have time for full-blown analysis, but still want to capture something structured and shareable.

We’ll include a link to that canvas in the follow-up email, along with a link to this recording and our Voice of the Customer template.

Q&A Highlights and Closing

Rina Alexin & Colleen O’Rourke | 01:12:15–01:20:30

Rina | 01:12:15–01:13:10
We have a lot of great questions. We won’t get to all of them live, but we’ll follow up in a post. Let’s tackle a few now.

Q: Where does “willingness to pay” fit into this process?

Colleen | 01:13:10–01:15:50
Realistically, customers rarely give us precise, reliable answers to “What would you pay?”

From a qualitative standpoint, I look at:

How many people share a given problem, and

How emotionally intense their reaction is — how much frustration or delight they express.

Emotion is a strong proxy for value. Then I combine that with quantitative pricing research and involve market research experts when needed. Qualitative data is one input into pricing decisions, not the only one.

Q: How do you connect codes with Jobs To Be Done?

Colleen | 01:15:50–01:17:00
You can absolutely treat JTBD elements as codes:

tasks,

goals,

pains,

outcomes.

Tag them wherever they appear, and then look at frequency and context across your interviews. The emotional layer we’ve been talking about fits beautifully with JTBD work.

Q: How long do the phases take? Executives always want to know.

Colleen | 01:17:00–01:19:30
Rough rule of thumb:

Plan at least as much time to code an interview as it took to conduct it.

Then add time on top of that for theming and synthesis.

So if you spend 10 hours interviewing, expect at least 20+ hours to get through coding, theming, and writing up insights.

Rina | 01:19:30–01:20:30
Thank you all so much for joining us today. Colleen, thank you for a wonderful presentation — I learned something new today, and I hope you all did too.

Please sign up for our next webinar on harnessing the voice of the customer to deliver a superior product. Be on the lookout for an email with:

a link to the recording,

the Customer Site Visit Canvas, and

our Voice of the Customer template.

Thank you again, and have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye everyone.