Synthesize Product Feedback Into Themes
Design a research workspace for tagging mixed feedback, testing emerging themes, and tracing every conclusion back to evidence.
The brief
Understand the problem
Background
Feedback arrives through interviews, surveys, sales notes, and support conversations. Teams often count loosely defined tags as if they were equivalent evidence, then lose the comments that challenged a popular theme.
User context
Priya is reviewing feedback about a new export workflow. She has 86 items from four sources and needs to prepare a synthesis for product planning without overstating a vocal customer segment.
Product problem
Researchers need to apply and refine a shared taxonomy while preserving source context, contradictory evidence, and confidence in each theme.
Objective
Create a tagging and synthesis workflow that turns a bounded feedback set into defensible product themes.
What to design
Define the experience
Required experience
- Review feedback with source and customer-segment context
- Apply, create, merge, and remove tags
- Build a theme from supporting and contradictory items
- Publish a synthesis snapshot with traceable evidence
Screens and states
- Feedback inbox
- Tag management
- Theme workspace
- Synthesis summary
Core user flow
Follow the critical path
- 01
Priya filters the export study to recent support and interview items
- 02
She tags several comments and merges two overlapping taxonomy labels
- 03
She opens an emerging reliability theme and adds one contradictory interview quote
- 04
She records confidence and the segments represented
- 05
She shares a dated synthesis snapshot with links to the underlying items
Product rules
Requirements and constraints
Requirements
- Preserve original wording, source, date, segment, and author permissions
- Show how taxonomy changes affect existing tagged items before applying them
- Separate item count from unique participant or account count
- Support evidence that strengthens, weakens, or complicates a theme
- Freeze published snapshots while allowing a later synthesis version
Constraints
- Restricted research notes cannot appear in a broadly shared summary
- Source volumes differ and cannot be treated as representative by default
- A theme needs human-authored rationale rather than only a tag total
Reality check
States worth considering
Ready-to-use content
Mock data
Use this content to test hierarchy and realistic data states. You can expand it when the concept needs more depth.
Feedback sources
- 32 support conversations
- 18 research interviews
- 24 survey responses
- 12 sales notes
Candidate themes
- Unclear export progress
- Large-file reliability
- Permission confusion
- Formatting fidelity
Finish line
What to deliver
- Four desktop screens plus a taxonomy-change confirmation state
Optional direction
Visual resources
Use these as a starting constraint if you want one. They are not part of the required solution.