Research Repository Structure Template
Somebody types the question eighteen months later. The study that answers it is named after a project, so the search returns nothing.
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A repository filed by study answers a question nobody asks. This pack re-indexes what you already have into one row per question, phrased the way somebody who does not know the answer would type it, filed under a product area, with the studies and the participant count behind it. Nielsen Norman Group's survey of repositories describes two shapes, a document library and a database of findings, and neither is indexed by the thing people search with.
The second half is the expiry. Every answer records the specific change that would invalidate it: a screen redesigned, a segment entering, a regulation landing. Never a date. A calendar rule bins good answers about things nothing has touched and keeps bad answers about things that moved last month. In the worked audit an eighteen-month rule and the change rule disagreed about 36 of 139 answers, and the 13 the calendar would have kept are the dangerous ones, because they read as fresh.
Three years at a freight-forwarding platform: 68 studies holding 149 distinct questions, only 41 reachable from a study title or tag, and 31 asked again while a live answer already sat in the folder, worth 81 researcher-days. Built for a team whose research keeps getting re-run. What a study found still comes out of research synthesis, and a standing weekly habit belongs in the continuous discovery pack; this is where both end up so the next person can find them.
What is in the pack
Insight Index
One row per question, phrased the way somebody who does not know the answer would type it, filed under one product area with the studies and the participant count behind it.
Expiry as a named change
Every answer records the screen, integration, segment or regulation whose movement would invalidate it, so the index can be checked against a release log rather than a calendar.
Study Register that points rather than stores
One row and a link per study, with the reports and transcripts left wherever they already live, because a repository project that begins with a migration ends during the migration.
The redundancy audit
Question-instances against distinct questions, with the repeats split into avoidable, expired and thin, and a cost attached to the avoidable ones only.
Reuse Log
Every incoming request checked against the index before anything is commissioned, recorded whether it hit or missed, with an honest column for whether it would really have become a study.
Disagreements kept on one row
Where two studies contradict each other, both answers stay on the same question with their dates, methods and segments, rather than becoming two rows nobody knows about.
How it works
- 1
Send everything
Reports, decks, transcripts, survey exports, the wiki pages, the folder nobody has opened. Partial is fine and duplicates are the finding.
- 2
Extract the questions
Each study is read for the questions it turned out to answer, including the ones nobody set out to ask, which are the ones that get searched for.
- 3
Merge, never duplicate
Each question is checked against the index first, so a repeat raises the participant count instead of opening a second row.
- 4
Set the expiry and start logging
Every answer gets the change that would kill it, and every incoming request gets checked against the index and recorded either way.
Frequently asked questions
What do I need before this is useful?
Whatever exists, however scattered. Reports, decks, transcripts, survey exports, the wiki pages, the research tool export, the folder nobody has opened. Partial is fine and duplicates are useful, because the duplicates are the finding. Nothing gets migrated or reformatted: each study becomes one row and a link.
Why index by question instead of by study?
Because a question is what somebody types. Information-foraging theory says people judge whether a source will answer them from its representation rather than its contents, and a study title represents the project. A study called Post-Brexit GB-EU flows answers who enters the commodity code on page four, and nobody will find it.
Do I have to migrate everything into a new tool?
No, and a repository project that begins with a migration ends during the migration. The Study Register points at wherever reports and transcripts already live. Filing a study is one row and a link, about twenty-five minutes, and what gets written down is the questions it answered rather than the study itself.
Why not just expire answers after eighteen months?
Because the calendar is wrong in both directions. Run both rules over the same 139 answers and they disagree on 36. Twenty-three are good answers about things nothing has touched. Thirteen the calendar would keep have already been invalidated by a product change, and those are the ones somebody acts on.
Is this a replacement for a research tool?
No. Nielsen Norman Group describes two repository shapes, a document library and a searchable database of findings, and a tool can be either. This changes the unit rather than the software: one row per question, an expiry tied to a named change, and a log of what the index deflected.
How do I know it is working?
The Reuse Log, which is the sheet most repositories skip. Every incoming request is checked against the index first and the outcome is recorded either way. In the worked audit's first two quarters, 24 of 56 requests were already answered and 17 of those would otherwise have become studies.
Does it decide what to build?
No, deliberately. The index holds what was found, never a recommendation, because a row that recommends becomes the thing people argue with while the evidence underneath goes unread. Requests from customers belong in feedback triage, and a finished usability test report gets filed here rather than written here.
Find out what your archive actually holds
Send whatever exists. The first thing back is the count: how many distinct questions, how many findable, and how many were asked twice.
Index what I already have