UX Research Strategy Beyond Individual Products
- Philip Burgess
- Dec 20, 2025
- 4 min read
By Philip Burgess | UX Research Leader
When I first started working in UX research, my focus was narrow: understand users for a single product, gather feedback, and improve that product. Over time, I realized this approach misses a bigger opportunity. UX research can and should extend beyond individual products to shape broader strategies that benefit entire organizations and ecosystems. This shift changes how we think about users, data, and design decisions.
In this post, I’ll share what I’ve learned about building a UX research strategy that goes beyond one product. I’ll explain why it matters, how to approach it, and practical steps you can take to make your research more impactful across multiple products or services.
Why UX Research Should Go Beyond Individual Products
Focusing on a single product’s user experience can lead to valuable insights, but it also creates blind spots. Users don’t interact with products in isolation. They engage with entire ecosystems—multiple apps, websites, devices, and services that connect in complex ways. When research stays confined to one product, it misses how users switch between tools, what frustrations carry over, and where opportunities for improvement lie across the board.
For example, I worked on a project where the company had three separate apps serving different parts of the customer journey. Each product team conducted their own research, but no one looked at the full picture. Users struggled with inconsistent navigation and repeated sign-ins. When we combined research efforts, we uncovered patterns that led to a unified login system and a smoother experience across all apps.
This broader approach helps organizations:
Identify shared pain points that affect multiple products
Create consistent experiences that build trust and ease of use
Prioritize investments based on overall user impact, not just product-specific metrics
Support innovation by spotting gaps and opportunities across the ecosystem
Building a Cross-Product UX Research Strategy
Developing a UX research strategy that spans beyond individual products requires planning and collaboration. Here are key steps I recommend:
1. Define Common Goals and Metrics
Start by aligning teams around shared objectives. What user outcomes matter most across products? These could include ease of onboarding, task completion rates, or customer satisfaction scores. Agreeing on common metrics helps unify research efforts and makes it easier to compare findings.
2. Map the User Journey Across Products
Create a comprehensive user journey map that includes touchpoints with all relevant products and services. This map reveals where users switch between tools, encounter friction, or drop off. It also highlights moments where research should focus.
3. Share Research Plans and Data
Encourage teams to share research plans, methods, and findings openly. Use centralized repositories or collaboration tools to store user interviews, survey results, usability tests, and analytics. This transparency prevents duplicated efforts and uncovers connections between insights.
4. Use Mixed Methods for Richer Insights
Combine qualitative and quantitative research across products. For example, follow up analytics showing high drop-off rates with interviews to understand why users leave. Cross-product surveys can reveal broader attitudes and preferences.
5. Involve Stakeholders Across Teams
Bring together product managers, designers, developers, and marketers from different teams to review research findings. Their diverse perspectives help interpret data and identify cross-product solutions.
Practical Examples of Cross-Product UX Research
Here are some real-world examples that illustrate how this strategy works:
E-commerce platform: A company with separate websites for retail, wholesale, and mobile shopping apps combined research to understand how customers move between channels. They discovered inconsistent product information caused confusion. The solution was a unified product database accessible by all teams.
Healthcare services: A hospital system with multiple patient portals found that users struggled to access their medical records across platforms. Cross-product research led to a single sign-on system and a redesigned portal interface that improved patient satisfaction.
Financial services: A bank with different apps for checking, investing, and loans used combined user feedback to identify overlapping features and redundant steps. They streamlined workflows and introduced a dashboard that gives users a holistic view of their finances.
Challenges and How to Overcome Them
Expanding UX research beyond individual products is not without challenges:
Silos between teams can block information sharing. Overcome this by setting up regular cross-team meetings and shared documentation.
Different research methods and tools may make data integration difficult. Standardize tools or create processes to translate findings into common formats.
Resource constraints might limit the ability to conduct broad research. Prioritize key user journeys that impact multiple products to maximize value.
Resistance to change can slow adoption of cross-product strategies. Demonstrate quick wins and show how broader insights improve user experience and business outcomes.
Final Thoughts on Expanding UX Research
Moving beyond individual products in UX research opens new doors to understanding users more deeply and designing better experiences. It requires coordination, shared goals, and a willingness to look at the bigger picture. When done well, it helps organizations create seamless, consistent, and meaningful experiences that users appreciate.
If you’re ready to take your UX research to the next level, start by mapping your users’ full journey and connecting with other teams. Share your findings openly and focus on common goals. This approach will help you uncover insights that no single product research could reveal.
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