Getting started/Conducting user interviews

How to conduct user interviews

The purpose of user interviews is to facilitate a listening session with your customers to learn as much as possible in a fixed amount of time (typically 30-60 minutes.) Here's a guide on how to prep, conduct, and wrap up each interview. Remember these sessions are more about discovering what your users do, think, and aspire to be. Try and avoid asking questions about your product or features.

How to prepare

If you need some guidance or a refresher on what you need to prepare for a user interview.

  • Review the list of questions or key talking points to get familiar
  • Keep a document ready for note-taking beforehand
  • If possible, invite a colleague to conduct the interview with you. One person plays the facilitator, while the other is the dedicated scribe or note-taker. (it's really tough to facilitate and take notes at the same time). There are many A.I. tools now that will help you record the interview and transcribe the conversation such as BuildBetter, Grain, and Zoom to name a few.

During the interview

Intro

5 mins

Use this script to start the meeting

"Thanks for participating. We really appreciate your time.""

My name is your name and I'm a role at organization. We’re here to learn more about how people in your role organize their workflow and how your current tools fit into your workflow. We have a few questions we’d like to ask, but mostly we hope to be listening to you as you share and possibly show us what you do and how you do it. There are no right or wrong answers!"
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"We’re aiming to spend about time-span (mins) with you. If you need to take care of anything time-sensitive, please feel free to adjust as needed. Before we get started, if it's alright with you, we’d like to record this session. The recording is strictly for internal solely for the purposes of learning and taking notes."
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"Do you have any questions before we begin?"

Questions

15-30 mins

Use these questions and prompts as a guide to get the conversation going

  • Please walk me through your typical day. Spare no detail!
  • What are some of your key responsibilities?
  • How do you do this today?
  • What do you like best about it? Could you show us?
  • What do you like the least? Can you show us?
  • If you could change one thing, what would it be? Why?

Wrap-up

2-5 mins

Use these questions and prompts as a guide to get the conversation going

"Thank you for your time, this was really helpful and informative. Do you have any questions for us?"

"If we have any follow-up questions, may we contact you directly?"
If yes; confirm the contact method and information preferred.

After the interview

It's generally good practice to debrief with any collaborators or observers on your team after the interview. During the debrief you'll want to:

  • Review the highlights of the interview. Use a digital whiteboard like Figjam or Miro to copy and paste insights into stickies that can then be used to sort and group into themes.
  • Upload the notes & recording to your repository and share it with your team.
  • Update the research project planner.