Common Research Pitfalls Cheat Sheet

This guide summarizes the key failures discussed in "The Art of the Ask." Use it as a quick reference to recognize and avoid the most common traps that can derail your user research and lead to costly product mistakes.

Print Me!

This page is designed to be a single-page reference. Use your browser's print function (Ctrl/Cmd + P) to save it as a PDF or print it out to keep on your desk.

Pitfall	The Trap (What it looks like)	Why It's Dangerous	The Solution (How to Avoid It)
Confirmation Bias	You enter research toprove your great idea is right. You ask leading questions ("Isn't this feature great?") and ignore feedback that contradicts your beliefs.	You create a false positive, leading the team to confidently build a product that nobody actually wants. It's the most common cause of product failure.	Seek to be proven wrong. Actively look for disconfirming evidence. Ask neutral, behavioral questions ("Tell me about the last time you..."). The goal is to find the truth, not to validate your ego.
Flawed Recruitment	To save time or money, you interview people who are easy to find but don't match your target audience (e.g., interviewing casual mobile users for a professional desktop tool).	Your insights are completely irrelevant to your product strategy. You end up building features for the wrong audience, wasting months of design and engineering effort.	Recruitment is non-negotiable. The quality of your insights is capped by the quality of your participants. Invest in a rigorous screener survey and the right channels to find your actual users.
Misinterpreting Behavior	A user is quiet or gives short answers, so you label them as "unhelpful." Or, a usersays they are organized, and you take their statement at face value.	You miss the real insight. Silence can mean a user can't articulate their complex, messy workflow. A user's self-perception is often idealized and not their reality.	Observe, don't just listen. When a user is stuck, ask them to "show me, don't tell me." Ask for specific stories about the "last time" they did something. Behavior is the ground truth.