5 Simple Steps to Conduct User Interview

Think, you just got an incredible product idea in your mind and now you want to implement it.

Really?

But before going any further you must find out whether someone would be interested in buying this theoretical product of yours or not?

Moreover, Does the Idea solves the User Problem? Infact, Are you really aware about the real User Needs? Do you understand their Pains and issues?

So, what a person should do to gather all this information?

The easiest way to gather this knowledge is to conduct USER INTERVIEWS.

User interviews is one of the many but important User Research Methods, conducted by a UX Researcher to explore and understand people by interacting and listening to them.

And In this guide, we will understand

• What is User Interview?
• When to Conduct User Interview?
• How to Conduct User Interview (5 Steps)
• DO’s and DONT’s in a User Interview
• Tips for a Great User Interview

So, let’s Begin

What is User Interview?

Here is an uncomfortable truth- it doesn’t matter what you like or dislike because it is irrelevant. The key factor which works for you doesn’t mean it works for your target user too. Reality is different from the expectations.

So, understanding user and learning their goals, motivations, needs and pain points is important. Moreover, learning about user’s environment is important too.

In addition to that, Knowing where your user spends most of their time, what gadgets they use and what kind of environment your user is in, plays a crucial role too. User interviews helps you see how the world looks like from the user’s perspective.

User interview is one of the most common User research methods. Moreover, It is a qualitative method used to get insights from the Target users. User research is one of the major User research methods used to create User personas.

Infact, it provides you the rich information and insights of what your target users think about your new product, site or service. After all, these are the ones who are going to buy and use your product/service so their experience and satisfaction is your utmost priority.

A User Interview is typically conducted by 2 UX researchers (one to conduct the interview and other to record the interview and take notes). And a good user interview is a result of an Empathetic research which stems from digging deep into user life.

And aims to capture

• User background
• What they do in daily life?
• What technology do they use?
• User Behavior
• Goals and motivations
• Challenges and Pain Points

It is also important to note that if you have already collected some existing beliefs and concepts perhaps from quantitative research then instead of conducting interview You can simple conduct some short surveys or do desktop research.

When to Conduct User Interview?

• Conduct user interviews if your question or problem needs further exploration
• Before the Product or Concept has been developed in order to learn needs of Users. Moreover, this helps in brainstorming the best solution possible.
• For collecting insight on already existing solutions by collection opinions on user experience with the product. Additionally, to find out the problems encountered while using the product and using the insights to create better User Experience (UX).
• During the early stages of product or concept development. Conduct User interview to get user feedback and use it to further refine the product.

5 steps to conduct User Interview

Step 1: Set a goal for the interview.

Just like life doesnt have a meaning unless you have a purpose, similarly unless you have a purpose of your research, interview is of no meaning.

Hence, you need to have a clear purpose for carrying out user interview for research. You need to have a clear understanding about

• Why is it that you want to conduct interviews, and
• What you want to get out of the Interviews.

While defining the goal, you need to ensure that it is realistic and to the point, and must not be broad of a goal. It should be concise and relates to the certain aspects of users’ behavior or attitudes. In fact, a goal guides the team in a design direction.

For example- A Interview goal defined as learn user behavior, is most likely to make interviews fail. And this is because the Interview goal doesn’t relate to your design needs and doesn’t guide you in any direction.

A concise, concrete goal related to a specific aspect of the users’ behavior or attitudes can bring the team to consensus, and direct how you’ll construct the interview.

For example, Suppose you might want to learn why 30% shoppers on a e commerce gift portal abandon their purchase during their checkout phase

Examples of good interview goals

• Learn how users conduct purchase on our portal and learn about the issues they phase during the entire process.

Step 2: Prepare for the interview session

1. Select an interview location

There are different locations where User interviews can be conducted, In-person at user’s site or in a controlled environment like a lab, or even remotely with the help of online-meeting tools like Zoom/WebEx

However, you must consider certain factors before choosing locations:

• Which location will be comfortable for users? Is the location near to they work/live? (Users often cancel the session if the location is far)
• Do you want to carry out interview in the usual Environment of User? (This is called Contextual Interview)
• Do you want to carry out Interview in an environment which is out of their regular environment? So that they can think freely and creatively.

It is important to note that if you deeply want to understand User behavior then In-person interview is preferable.

In person user interview allows You to gain valuable insights by observing the User body language and by understanding their tone.

Here, it is also important to understand that a user-interview is different from a Usability Testing method. A Usability testing is about learning is the design that is designed by UX designer is a Usable by the user or not. However, User interview is about leaning the User behavior with respect to the user goal.

2. Recruiting Users

The Users to be recruited for the User Interview should represent the target audience. Here, you can Use your User Persons in order to identlfy interview participants that match them.

Note that, there are no hard and fast rules while recruiting no of users for interview. However, as per the Guru Jakob Nielsen you only need to carry interview with five users.

And this is because the best results come from researching no more than 5 users. Even if you continue with more participants then make sure to stop the research if by participant number five you stop getting any new insights .
Some of the ways to recruit Participants are

• Use Social media

Check if your immediate family member and friends matches your Target user. Moreover, make use of you social media connections like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to find Participants and they will be happy to be a part of the research.

For effective results, ask your digital marketing manager to start a small campaign inviting users to participate and offer freebies to people in order to encourage them to participate.

The only issue with this method is that this method makes it difficult to segment people by demographics, occupation, or behavior.

• Existing/old customers

Recruit existing customers who are using your product in order to learn any existing issues or happiness related to the product.
Or In fact even those who left it for competitor’s in order to learn the reason they left your product and satisfaction level related to competitor over your product.

• Paid interviewees.

The easiest and fastest method to find targeted users is by approaching marketing agencies or even through Dedicated sites like User Interviews With some budget in your pocket, you will connect with targeted users
It is important to note that while recruiting participants, you must filter out people who are already aware about the process otherwise you may get biased answers.

3 — Prepare a discussion guide

You need to rehearse before conducting the Interview, in addition to that you need to have a guiding document to guide the conversation.

The Interview script serves two purposes

• It contains list of all the questions that you should ask in the user interview
• Contains prompt if you go off track.

Spend time to properly plan your questions because always remember that Right questions leads to right answers.

It is also important to note that Script is just a guide and you must get tied to it. Because many a times it happens that User tends to say something interesting and unexpecting, and you might want to explore more on it. So Feel free to ask questions not listed in the script.

Types of Interview questions

1. User intro questions

These are light hearted questions, asked to make the user comfortable and open up

• Tell me something about yourself?
• What does your typical day look like?

1. Product specific questions

These questions are asked to get specific details about user behavior with respect to the product.

• What is your biggest pain point related to the task?
• How do you make the task easier?

Avoid Closed ended Questions which leads to YES/NO from users like DO YOU ? WOULD YOU ?

Keep the Questions Open ended like HOW DID YOU? WHY DID YOU?

Pro Tip — Don’t use heavy words and jargon unfamiliar to the user.
And Don’t ask questions about the future. For example, Questions like, “Will you purchase our product when it is launched in the market?”.
People are most likely to say yes in order to make you feel good.

Step 3 — Conduct Interview

OK!
So, After the target users are recruited and Interview guide is completed. Next step is to go out and conduct interview.

1.Make Interviewee feel comfortable

A good user Interview is all about getting the other person open up and feel comfortable in your presence so that they can speak their mind.

Have you heard of the Phrase ‘You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it’. So, use the same principle here and Dress in a manner which is similar to them.

Offer them a Beverage and start by a engage in a light banter to ease them up.

2. Start the Interview

Introduce yourself and briefly tell them about the work you’re doing and why you think they might be able to help you.

Start referring to the Interview guide. Start with some User Intro Questions and then move to Product Specific Questions.

As mentioned before Don’t ask questions about the future. For example, “Will you purchase our product when it is launched in the market?”.

Also, Don’t ask for estimates For example, “Would you pay $500 for this product?”. Instead ask, “How much you paid for a similar Product?”

If you get in a situation and cant seem to get the meaningful answer from user then Use the 5 Whys principle.

The five whys is a question based Interrogative technique which helps to drill down to the root cause of the problem. Each question starts with “why” and each answer forms the basis of the next question.

The process Continues five times (or more), digging deeper until you arrive to the root of the issue.
Root cause uncovered — Unawareness about other Pets in the neighborhood.

Avoid closed questions with simple “yes” or “no. These questions prevent people from giving you more valuable information.

3. Record the observations

Ideally, two people conducts user interview, where one person interviews and the other take notes. However, its ok to interview alone and make use of technology to record the sessions.

Though User don’t mind you recording the sessions however, it is polite to ask them for permissions.

You can either audio record or video record the session however, make sure you ask them for permission

Make sure you are intently involved in listening to the person because this not only make you get better understanding about them but also make users feel important and heard.

4.Wrap up

Always thank the interviewee at the end of the process. Thank them for how they have helped in clearing out the doubts related to the User study and how this will help them in designing a solution which can make their life easier.

Also make sure to ask users if they don’t mind meeting for a couple more sessions, if required. If you have marked your impression on them then they will gladly accept your request and wont wait to see how their words impacted the product development.

As mentioned before, it’s recommended to conduct five User interviews. You can move ahead and carry on more interviews however, if you learn that you have stopped gathering new insights then it means that you should stop conducting more interviews and analyze and synthesize the findings.

Step 4 — Synthesize the Findings

With the enormous amount of data captured in the Interviews which includes dozens of notes, video and audio recordings. It is very normal to get overwhelmed with this abundant information.

Remember to ‘Keep calm and Carry on’.

Take it slow and make use of the user observations to come up with the actionable recommendations that you can provide to the stakeholders.You Don’t need to come up with a 50 page long report. People will discard it.

Instead, come up with a finding with major bullet points and lots of screenshots and photos. A report should be something that is quick to scan while the other person can also grasp the major points.

You can redefine your User Persona, create Empathy maps and even storyboards, and include them as a part of your presentable findings. These are digestible artifact which are easy to understand by everyone.

Step 5 — Present your Findings

Next you have to present your findings and recommendations to the key stakeholders in the project. It is extremely important to involve them early on in the project.
Don’t go the vanilla way of Presenting your findings through just a PPT. You can hold Design workshops as well. Simply begin with presenting the findings and then include some brainstorming activities for Ideating the ideas and then continue to sketch it. Doing this makes them feel responsible for fueling life into the project.

DO’s and DONT’s in a User Interview

Tips for a Great User Interview

1. Ask permission for Recording

Be Polite and always ask users for Permission before recording the Interview Sessions. While many people say that the best way of data collection during interviews is note taking. However, it is important to stay engaged with users.

It is not really possible to pay full attention to participants and take notes at the same time.

You can record the sessions and then go back and refer to it multiple times in order to synthesize the information. Just make sure that participants are okay with that.

2. Make the User feel Comfortable

The world runs through networking and building good relationships. You can get your work done through it.

So, in order to get a quality and insightful interview, make sure that interviewee feel comfortable with you.
And it is not even hard.

Start by engaging in a small banter and offer them a non-alcoholic drink. Always greet them with their name (Everyone loves to hear their name).

Ask them ice-breakers questions like ‘Tell me something about yourself’. Ensure that user doesn’t feel like they’re being tested in any way.

3. Always Prepare a Discussion Guide

This is the single most important piece of advice for your interview. A discussion guide contains a list of questions you want to ask and it is closely tied with the Interview Goal.

It is a guiding document to guide the conversation.
In addition to that, the guide acts as a reminder of the questions you want to ask or topics you want to cover.

4. Always ask Open Ended Questions

Never settle down with “yes” or “no” answers because it serves no purpose in the Interview. In-fact, it will act as a big blocker in an interview.

Don’t settle for the first answer you get and try to dig deeper to understand the point of view. Infact, try to ask follow-up questions using the ‘Five Whys’ technique.

You are most likely to gain through this by uncovering additional insight.

5. Embrace awkward silence.

Sometimes, the participants needs time to think before answering a question. Its normal to feel awkward with the silence, however Don’t jump in to fill up the silence with words.

In order to fill in the void, the interviewer offer more information to fill space. This infact misleads the participant.

Don’t fall into this misleading traps and Instead, give the interviewee the opportunity to provide additional information.

A little silence goes a long way.

6. Stay neutral.

Stay neutral at the responses you receive. Your behavior can effect the user responses. Don’t react strongly if you don’t like any response because then they will refrain in revealing more information. And at the same time don’t get overly excited too.

Human emotions always make things complicated. So, to get the most authentic answers

Thankyou for Reading!

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Originally Published on Yukti.io