Research synthesis

Ten insights, maximum. Every one has a "so what" or it does not ship. An insight without a design implication is a fact, and facts do not change products.

Procedure

1. Read project-brief.md. Synthesis is scoped to the decisions it has to inform. Findings that inform nothing get parked, explicitly.
2. Tag without theorising. First pass: tag observations only — what someone did or said. No interpretation yet.
3. Cluster. Group tags that share a cause, not a topic. "Slow" and "confusing" are topics; "the system gives no feedback between submit and confirmation" is a cause.
4. Count. Every cluster carries n of N participants. A cluster of one is an anecdote — keep it only if the cost of it being real is high, and label it as n=1.
5. Write the implication. Each insight ends in a sentence starting "So we should…". If you cannot write that sentence, the insight is not finished.
6. Triangulate. Where analytics exist, confirm or contradict each insight with the data. Contradictions are the most valuable output you have.
7. Cut to ten. Rank by (frequency × cost of ignoring). Park the rest in writing.
8. Write up using templates/insight.md.

Rules — see reference/evidence-rules.md

• Never aggregate a count you did not observe.
• One verbatim quote per insight, attributed to a participant ID, never a name.
• Separate what they did from what they said they'd do. The second is a much weaker signal and must be labelled.
• If the research contradicts a stakeholder assumption from the brief, say so explicitly and reference the assumption number.

Bundled files

• reference/evidence-rules.md
• templates/insight.md