How do you whiteboard a user research problem in an interview?

Hi, everyone! Has anyone ever been asked to “solve and discuss a user research problem” as a whiteboarding challenge during the hiring process for a UX/user research job? And if so, what kind of problem was? How did you approach it?

I understand how to whiteboard a UX design challenge, but am really at a loss as to what to expect when it comes to whiteboarding a user research challenge. Any insights at all would be hugely appreciated!

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caveat: I didn’t get the job

They asked me to do a similar thing at one farma research company.
What I did was to brainstorm ideas about methods and possible results with some sketches of possible solutions, journey maps and list of assumptions to test.

In retrospect, they probably needed to see more business value of the research. Schedule with sample sizes and budgets. How many people, how much time and what kind of budget do I need. Not methodology or sketches.

Good luck, let us know how did you do!

Hm, interesting task. I would find that very difficult to prepare for as well. I’m not even sure what it means. Maybe that’s the point of the task – they want to see how you address a challenge full stop.
Maybe the challenge could be something like: OnlineShoeStore wants to find out why the shopping cart abandonment rate has increased the last 6 months. What type of user research would you conduct to solve this? What research methods would you use (surveys, interviews, focus groups etc)? What would you ask, analyse, measure? How would you recruit the users? Etc. Anyway, good luck and let us know how it goes – I’m curious about the challenge.
Lin