Macro / Middle-Range / Micro Research Portfolio
Sort every research question into three altitudes and starve the middle one that eats your team's time.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
Judd Antin's core diagnosis of why user research gets laid off: teams over-invest in 'middle-range' research (interesting but not pointed at a business decision) and under-invest in macro (strategy, competitors, innovation, planning-cycle) and micro (usability, funnel, why-an-A/B-test-moved) research. The framework is a triage rule: classify each request by altitude, do more macro and micro, and only run middle-range when it can be sharpened into a business-language question. Middle-range work is the stuff that feels valuable, triggers 'we knew that already,' and produces no decision change.
Origin
Coined by Judd Antin (ex-head of research at Airbnb, built research at Facebook/Meta) in his 2023 essay 'The UX Research Reckoning is Here.' The macro/middle-range/micro naming echoes sociologist Robert K. Merton's 'middle-range theory,' repurposed here for applied product research.
Core principles
- 01Research value is a function of altitude, not effort or rigour.
- 02Middle-range research is a devastating mix: fascinating to researchers, non-decisive for the business.
- 03Micro research is not junior scut work — it is where fast, provable business value lives.
- 04Macro research belongs to the annual/strategic planning cycle, not to every sprint.
- 05A middle-range question becomes legitimate the moment it is framed in the language of the funnel, the OKRs, or the strategy.
How to run it
- 1
Classify the incoming question by altitude
Macro = market, competitors, TAM, concept-car / 5-year direction, strategic planning. Micro = usability, pixel-level quality, why an A/B test moved the way it did, funnel friction. Middle-range = 'how do our hosts feel about X' — a constituency and a topic, but no business decision attached.
Pro tip Ask: which line of the funnel or which OKR does the answer move? If you cannot name one, it is middle-range.
Watch out Middle-range requests are the most common thing PMs, designers, and execs ask for — volume is not evidence of value.
- 2
Tie macro work to the planning calendar
Run big, slow, forward-looking research as an input to annual planning (Antin ran 'Insights 2019/2020' concept-car projects at Airbnb, synthesizing a full year of insights with designers and engineers into a five-year concept). Do not attempt macro work inside a sprint.
Pro tip Synthesize every insight source you already have before commissioning new fieldwork for the macro question.
- 3
Make micro research routine and fast
Push usability, CTA, and funnel-friction studies to a 48-hour cadence. These answer questions A/B tests cannot ('why did it move?') and convert directly into shipped metric gains.
Pro tip Pair micro research with the experimentation team — the test gives you causality, the research gives you the how and why.
Watch out Researchers who consider usability beneath them will resist this. Antin explicitly disagrees: 'that's not just work for interns.'
- 4
Sharpen or refuse middle-range requests
When a middle-range question arrives, either reframe it against a known metric trend, funnel step, or competitor threat — or decline it. A middle-range question that has been pointed at a business problem is worth the time; a blob one is not.
Pro tip The reframe sounds like: 'I've seen the metric trend; here is exactly the point in the funnel where I think the answer will pay off.'
Watch out Reframing requires the researcher to have read the strategy docs. Without business fluency, every request stays a blob.
In the wild
Airbnb research found users were stalling in the purchase funnel because a CTA's wording made them fear the click would initiate a purchase, when it only advanced a step. The insight surfaced in roughly 48 hours; the content design team rewrote about seven characters of button copy.
→ Roughly a 1% conversion lift — worth millions — from a micro-level study run overnight.
Antin's illustrative blob question: 'We want to know how Airbnb hosts feel about their payment options.' Reasonable, interesting, researchable — but not targeted at a business problem, not framed against the funnel or the OKRs.
→ Yields insights like 'hosts want flexibility,' which are interesting, hard to operationalize, and easy to dismiss as already-obvious.
Common mistakes
Defaulting to the middle because it's what gets asked for
Researchers do middle-range work partly because it's interesting and mostly because it's what PMs, designers, and execs request. Demand does not equal impact — the request queue is the symptom, not the plan.
Treating usability as junior work
Downgrading micro research strands the team in the middle range, where results are least operational and post-hoc bias is strongest.
Is it for you?
Best for
Research leaders and PMs at a product company where research feels slow, obvious, or perpetually at risk in layoffs
Not ideal for
Pre-product-market-fit teams with no funnel, no metrics, and no strategy documents to point research at
From the transcript
“so macro research is like big picture strategic business focused forward-looking Innovation”
“it's just this devastating mix of really interesting to many including researchers and not impactful enough for the business”
“the micro level there's so much business value to be derived there so much business value and it can go so fast”
“we still need to do that middle range uh research the question is valuable but it's now very pointed and that the time is worth…”
From the episode
The UX research reckoning is here
Judd Antin (Airbnb, Meta)