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Stakeholder Goals

What Stakeholder Goals are in Lookback, why they matter, how they are created, and how they guide both research focus and AI-assisted sense-making.

Henrik Mattsson avatar
Written by Henrik Mattsson
Updated this week

Stakeholder Goals are a core concept in Lookback.

They capture what matters to the people who will act on research - and make that intent explicit, persistent, and usable throughout a project.

They are not requirements, KPIs, or success criteria.
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They are lenses for attention.

What Stakeholder Goals are

Stakeholder Goals describe:

  • questions stakeholders care about

  • risks they want to reduce

  • assumptions they want validated

  • themes they want visibility into

Examples:

  • “Understand why users abandon onboarding”

  • “Learn how pricing is perceived by small teams”

  • “Identify risks that could block enterprise adoption”

Goals help researchers stay oriented - especially as projects grow, rounds multiply, and evidence accumulates.

What Stakeholder Goals are not

Stakeholder Goals are not:

  • acceptance criteria

  • hypotheses to be proven

  • success metrics

  • instructions to the researcher

They do not define what must be true.


They define what we want to pay attention to.

Multiple goals can coexist - and even conflict - within the same project.

Where Stakeholder Goals live

Stakeholder Goals live at the Project level.

They:

  • apply across all rounds and sessions

  • persist over time

  • provide continuity as research evolves

This is intentional.

Goals describe the why of the project, not the mechanics of a single study.

How Stakeholder Goals are created

Stakeholder Goals can enter a project in two different ways — with different defaults and responsibilities.

1. Automatically generated from Stakeholder Interviews

When you run Stakeholder Interviews, Eureka analyzes those conversations and automatically generates Stakeholder Goals based on recurring priorities, concerns, and themes expressed by stakeholders.

These goals:

  • are added directly to the Project’s list of Stakeholder Goals

  • are active by default

  • are treated as AI suggestions, not final decisions

If no action is taken, these goals will still be used by Eureka to:

  • interpret upcoming user sessions

  • automatically suggest Findings related to those goals

For this reason, researchers are encouraged to:

  • review generated goals early

  • edit wording for clarity or intent

  • remove goals that should not guide the research

AI helps ensure stakeholder intent is captured; researchers ensure it is correct.

2. Manually created or edited by the researcher

Researchers can also:

  • add new Stakeholder Goals manually

  • edit AI-generated goals

  • remove goals that are no longer relevant

Manual goals behave exactly the same as AI-generated ones once they exist:

  • they guide researcher focus

  • they are used by Eureka to surface relevant evidence

  • they persist at the Project level until changed

Regardless of how a goal is created, researchers always own the final set of active goals.

How Stakeholder Goals are used during research

Stakeholder Goals influence research in two important ways:

They guide researcher focus

Goals help researchers:

  • prioritize what to listen for

  • frame follow-up questions

  • interpret ambiguous behavior

  • maintain alignment as studies iterate

They act as a shared reference point — especially in multi-stakeholder projects.

They help Eureka surface relevant evidence

When Stakeholder Goals are defined, Eureka can:

  • recognize moments in sessions that relate to those goals

  • suggest Findings tied to goal-relevant moments

  • surface these suggestions in:

    • the session feed

    • the Findings view

These suggested Findings:

  • always link to the underlying video

  • help reduce the risk of missing important moments

AI helps notice - researchers still decide.

Stakeholder Goals and Findings

Stakeholder Goals do not replace analysis.

Instead, they:

  • increase the chance that important evidence is surfaced early

  • connect Findings to organizational context

  • make it easier to explain why a Finding matters

Goals → help surface Findings
Findings → remain the unit of evidence

Stakeholder Goals evolve over time

Goals are not set once and forgotten.

They can:

  • be refined as research progresses

  • be added when new questions emerge

  • be retired when they are no longer relevant

This makes them a living input, not static configuration.

Why Stakeholder Goals matter

Making stakeholder intent explicit helps teams:

  • reduce misalignment

  • avoid selective attention

  • keep research relevant

  • make AI more useful and less opaque

  • connect evidence to impact

Stakeholder Goals turn unspoken expectations into shared context.

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