Email 4: What an insight actually is

After your interview is complete and the transcript is available, your next task is interpretation.

An insight is not a summary.

It is not a general impression.

An insight begins with something specific that was said.

When reviewing your notes or transcript, select a meaningful statement.

When you do, the Insights panel on the right side of the screen becomes active. The selected text is captured automatically.

From there:

1. Link the insight to a hypothesis.
   • Click “Link to Hypothesis.”
   • A mini view of your Canvas will appear (CS, PR, VP, etc.).
   • Select the relevant segment.
   • Choose the hypothesis this evidence informs.
   • Indicate whether the evidence supports or does not support that hypothesis.

You may link a single insight to multiple hypotheses if appropriate.

2. Add a brief comment.

   Clarify why this statement matters.

3. Add tags.

   Use built-in tags or create your own to track themes.

4. Assign priority.

   Low, medium, high, or critical.

   Priority reflects how significantly this insight affects your understanding.

Then save.

This process does two important things:

It separates observation from interpretation.

And it makes your reasoning traceable.

An interview becomes knowledge only when specific evidence is linked to explicit claims.

Take your time here.

Precision in insight creation determines the quality of your conclusions later.

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Open a recent interview and extract at least one insight:

[Open Interviews]

In the next note, we’ll focus on how to look for patterns across multiple interviews.

Read the next onboarding article → Review evidence before drawing conclusions