All frameworks and cheat sheets

Checklist

Curse of knowledge checklist for user research

Eight checks for your discussion guide, tasks, screener and report

Checklist of eight ways to catch the curse of knowledge before a study goes live, from removing internal names to piloting with a newcomer
Run it on your discussion guide, tasks and screener before the first real session

Eight checks that help research teams catch the curse of knowledge, the habit of assuming others know what you know. Use it on interview questions, usability tasks, screeners and reports before they reach participants or stakeholders. Most of the checks come down to testing your materials on someone without your knowledge. Koji's interview preview lets a colleague take the interview exactly as a participant would.

Where this appears

What's in this checklist

  • Strip internal feature names, acronyms and team jargon
  • Use the words participants use in tickets and reviews
  • Write tasks as goals, not as the steps or labels you know
  • Ask someone outside the team to read the guide aloud
  • Pilot with one real participant before the study goes live
  • List every moment you had to explain something in a session
  • Code what participants said, not what you know they meant
  • Test your summary on a reader outside research

Use this image

Free to use in your docs, decks and posts under CC BY 4.0, as long as you credit Koji with a link to this page. To embed it, paste this into your page:

html
<a href="https://www.koji.so/visuals/curse-of-knowledge-research-checklist"><img src="https://www.koji.so/visuals/curse-of-knowledge-research-checklist/curse-of-knowledge-research-checklist.png" alt="Checklist of eight ways to catch the curse of knowledge before a study goes live, from removing internal names to piloting with a newcomer" width="1080" height="1080" /></a>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.koji.so/visuals/curse-of-knowledge-research-checklist">Curse of knowledge checklist for user research</a>, Koji</p>