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Our Docs feature will be renamed to Docs for all Dovetail workspaces from October 2025.
The word ‘insight’ has a variety of different definitions. In Dovetail, an insight is a specific object type where you summarize and share high-level project findings in a simple format. Docs are a flexible way for you to present high-level findings from common themes and trace important quotes back to their original source. In this lesson, we will cover two common types of insights you can create in a project – an atomic finding or a formal research report.

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Insight as an atomic finding

The most common type of insight created by researchers in Dovetail is an atomic finding. Often referred to as a “nugget”, an atomic finding represents a single, high-level finding from a project. This type of insight is useful for bringing together related pieces of evidence that contribute to any critical discoveries that require immediate attention or action. These could look like:
  • A discovery about human behavior and the underlying motivations behind that behavior
  • Information that challenges what we believe about users and how they exist in the world
  • Knowledge that uncovers fundamental principles that drive us towards seeing users in a new way
There are a few key pros and cons to creating insights that represent atomic findings from a project. If you decide to create insights as atomic findings, here are a few tips we recommend:
  • Contextualize: Encourage teams to provide context when sharing single-finding insights. This can include background information, related findings, or how the insight fits into the larger picture of the project or organization.
  • Link to broader goals: Help teams understand how single findings connect to broader organizational objectives or customer needs. This can foster a more strategic approach to decision-making.
  • Encourage collaboration: Promote discussions around single findings in team meetings or workshops to explore their implications and potential actions collaboratively. This can help mitigate the risks of oversimplification and cherry-picking.

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Insight as a research report

The second most common insight is a research report. This typically is an in-depth summary of a single project with a collection of findings. There are a few key pros and cons to creating insights that represent a research report of a project in Dovetail.

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Insight as a product requirements doc

To drive action from your research, product teams can use insights to create and share a product requirements doc. As you can link decisions directly to evidence from customer conversations, using insights is a compelling way to align teams on what to build, why it matters, and how to measure success.