Dovetail for Designers: Centralize and Analyze User Research

Dovetail is a research repository built for storing, analyzing, and sharing user research. Instead of transcripts and recordings scattered across folders, Dovetail gives you one place to tag insights, identify patterns, and build a searchable knowledge base. Research and design teams use it to make qualitative data actionable: turning hours of interviews into clear themes and evidence-backed recommendations.

Key Specs

How Designers Use Dovetail

Dovetail fits into the research phase of design, helping teams make sense of qualitative data from interviews, usability tests, and field studies.

Research Storage and Organization

Upload interview transcripts, session recordings, survey responses, and field notes into projects organized by research initiative. Each project holds multiple sessions. Tag insights as you review transcripts, highlighting quotes and moments that matter. Dovetail preserves context: every tag links back to the original source, timestamp, and participant.

Insight Tagging and Taxonomy

Create tags for observations like “pain point,” “workaround,” or “feature request.” Apply tags to text snippets or video timestamps as you review sessions. Build a taxonomy by grouping related tags into themes. For example, group “slow load time,” “too many clicks,” and “confusing navigation” under a “Usability Issues” theme. This structure reveals patterns across dozens of sessions that would be invisible in raw transcripts.

Video Highlight Reels

Pull tagged moments from interview recordings into highlight reels: short compilations showing multiple users expressing the same frustration or need. Reels are powerful for stakeholder presentations because watching five users struggle with the same task is more convincing than reading quotes. Export reels or share via link.

Collaborative Analysis

Invite team members to review sessions and add their own tags. Dovetail shows who tagged what, preventing duplicate work. Use comments to discuss interpretations. Merge similar tags to maintain consistency. This collaborative workflow turns solo research analysis into a team activity where different perspectives strengthen findings.

Dovetail vs. Alternatives

How does Dovetail compare to other research and documentation tools?

Choose Dovetail if: Research is a core part of your process and you need specialized tools for qualitative analysis, video tagging, and insight synthesis.

Choose Notion if: You need general-purpose documentation and are willing to build custom research workflows with databases and embeds.

Choose Airtable if: You prefer spreadsheet-style data organization and want to build a custom research database with formulas and views.

Choose Condens if: You’re in Europe and prefer EU-hosted data, or need advanced sentiment analysis features Dovetail doesn’t offer.

Getting Started with Dovetail

A 20-minute quick start to your first research project:

Step 1: Create a project and upload data

Click “New project” and give it a name tied to your research initiative. Upload interview transcripts, video recordings, or survey responses. Dovetail auto-transcribes audio and video. For text files, paste content directly. Each upload becomes a separate session in your project.

Step 2: Tag insights as you review

Open a transcript or video. Highlight text or select a video timestamp, then add a tag describing what you observed. Use active, specific tag names: “Expects instant search results” instead of “Search.” Create new tags as you discover new patterns. Don’t worry about organizing tags yet; focus on capturing observations.

Step 3: Group tags into themes

After tagging several sessions, open the Insights view to see all tags. Drag related tags into groups to create themes. For example, group “Can’t find settings,” “Unclear labels,” and “Hides important features” into a “Navigation problems” theme. Themes reveal the big picture across all sessions.

Dovetail in Your Design Workflow

Dovetail sits between research and design, helping you move from raw data to actionable insights.

• Before Dovetail: Conduct interviews via Zoom or in person, run usability tests with Maze or UserTesting, or collect survey responses with Typeform.
• In Dovetail: Upload recordings and transcripts, tag observations, build themes, create highlight reels, and write insight summaries.
• After Dovetail: Use findings to inform design decisions in Figma, write design briefs in Notion, create user journey maps in FigJam, and share evidence with stakeholders via highlight reels.

Common tool pairings:

• Dovetail + Zoom for automatic call recording and transcription during remote interviews
• Dovetail + Notion to embed highlight reels and insight summaries in broader project documentation
• Dovetail + FigJam to map user journeys using quotes and evidence pulled from Dovetail
• Dovetail + Maze to combine usability test recordings with follow-up interview insights in one place

Common Problems (and How to Fix Them)

These challenges come up often when teams adopt Dovetail. Here’s how to solve them.

“My tags are inconsistent and duplicated”

This happens when multiple people tag without a shared vocabulary. Fix it by establishing a tagging guide before analysis starts. Define what each tag means. Use consistent phrasing: “Feature request: [description]” or “Pain point: [description].” Merge duplicate tags in the Insights view by dragging one onto another. Appoint one person as the taxonomy owner to maintain consistency as the project grows.

“I have hundreds of tags and can’t find anything”

Too many granular tags create noise. Group tags into themes early and often. Aim for 5-10 high-level themes per project, each containing 3-10 related tags. Delete tags that only appear once or twice unless they’re critical. Use Dovetail’s search to find specific observations instead of browsing through long tag lists.

“Stakeholders won’t watch full session recordings”

Don’t ask them to. Create highlight reels focused on specific questions stakeholders care about. A 3-minute reel showing five users struggling with checkout is more persuasive than a 45-minute interview. Add text overlays to reels explaining what viewers should notice. Share reels in Slack or embed them in presentations.

“Dovetail is too expensive for our team size”

The Team plan ($29/user/month) costs more than general tools like Notion. Evaluate whether dedicated research software saves enough time to justify the cost. For occasional research (a few interviews per quarter), Notion or Google Docs might suffice. For continuous research (weekly interviews, ongoing usability testing), Dovetail’s specialized features pay off. Start with the free tier for a single research initiative to test value before committing.

“How do I know when to stop tagging?”

You’ve tagged enough when new sessions don’t surface new themes. In research, this is called saturation. If you’re seeing the same patterns repeat across interviews and no longer discovering surprises, you can stop. Typically, 6-12 interviews are enough to reach saturation for a focused research question. Tag systematically rather than exhaustively: focus on observations that answer your research questions, not every detail.