How to use the Research plan template

Start a board from it
Use this template opens a new Freero board with the Research plan template on it (sign up free first). On a board you already have, open Templates in the toolbar and search for “Research plan”.
Follow the instruction on the board
“Start from the decision the research will inform. If nobody is waiting on the answer, it is the wrong study, or the wrong time.”
Fill in each part
- Decision it informs What will the team decide differently depending on what we learn?
- Research questions What do we need to learn? Three to five questions, not interview questions.
- Method How will we learn it, and why this method?
- Participants Who, how many, and how we find them.
- Timeline Key dates from recruiting to readout.
- Sharing the findings Who needs the results, in what form, and how will they join along the way?
Bring your team and your agents
Invite people to the board or share a link, and work on it together live. The timer is in the top bar, private mode and voting in the board menu, and Claude or ChatGPT can join through Freero’s MCP server.

Work on it with an AI agent

Connect an assistant once and it works on the board with you, with your permissions: by default it reads and proposes, and people decide.

You ask: “Fill in the Research plan board from these notes.”
What happens It reads the board, then proposes sticky notes for it. Nothing changes until someone on the board accepts them.
You ask: “Group what we wrote into themes and list the actions.”
What happens It proposes clusters with a title each and task cards for the actions, labelled with its name and yours.

Diary study plan
Plan a study where participants record their experiences over days or weeks: recruitment, prompts, check-ins and analysis.
Usability test plan
Plan a round of usability sessions: what you need to learn, with whom, the tasks they will try and how you will judge success.
Affinity map
Turn a pile of research notes into themes, with one insight written under each.
Interview guide
A discussion guide for customer interviews: warm-up, their story, the problem in depth, current workarounds and wrap-up.
Insight synthesis
Turn research notes into insights: what you observed, what it means, and what the team should do about it.
Recruitment screener
Screen research participants with a few questions that let the right people in and keep the wrong ones out.