Scoping is a senior signal

Saying what you would NOT research is often more impressive than the study itself. “I'd skip a survey on feature preference here, because we already know they want history from support tickets. The open question is whether the cost of losing context is high enough to act on, so I'd go qualitative on that.” That sentence shows judgment, restraint and that you've read the existing data.

“Before I pick a method, let me make sure I'm answering the right thing. The decision is whether to build the panel this quarter. The part the team can't see clearly is whether losing chat context actually costs developers real work or whether it's a minor annoyance. That's the unknown I'd research. Sound right or is the real worry something else?”