User interview 101

I want to share my experience to motivate anyone who wants to give user interviews a try.

So you want to conduct user interviews

User interviews are a powerful discovery tool to learn about your users, stay in touch with reality, and build empathy with them through a qualitative approach.

They are effective at answering questions about:

• the product experience in general
• a specific aspect of the experience
• a prospective topic (ie a problem you want to solve or an opportunity you are considering investing on)
• your competition

Keep a few things in mind:

• User interviews aren’t a way to build a quantitative vision of a problem. They are great at delivering a qualitative vision of your product with insights you may not expect at first.
• A user interview shouldn’t be a way to confirm the relevance of your current work. I recommend you avoid doing it, as you may be biased when asking questions and users may just give you the answers they think you want to hear.

Who should you interview and when?

• It can be a targeted effort. Let’s assume you need to learn more about a particular aspect of your product before designing a solution to a problem. I suggest you interview people first, then brainstorm and draft your ideas. Target them carefully and be sure to choose the most relevant persona(s). Personas are fictional people who embody your main segments of users through specific characteristics (demographics, lifestyle).
• It can also be an ongoing practice. In the lean approach, the “voice of the customer” (VoC) is key to improving your product. Running user interviews on a regular basis will help you build empathy with your users, understand their struggles, and maybe even help you discover a problem you were not aware of. Eventually, it will help you design a better product for them.
  For these interviews, I target people randomly regarding their location, user journey stage, age, desired outcomes, dissatisfaction levels, and power user status — or any other criteria relevant to your business.

How much money/time can you afford to spend on this?

Depending on your bandwidth and the maturity of your product, you may opt for different options.

• You can run interviews as a routine to learn on an ongoing basis. It can be in person but doesn’t have to. You can use any video call tool convenient for both you and your interviewee. I strongly encourage designers to do this, as it can be a beneficial practice that helps to maintain humility during the design process.
• You can run guerilla interviews in public places like parks, train stations, and coffee shops, you name it!
  This option requires a lot of courage, as you will likely be rejected many times. I enjoy train stations, as they bring together people from many backgrounds who are often just trying to pass the time. It’s important to be selective when it comes to choosing the right audience, so before investing any time in someone, filter them through questions. A small incentive always helps too! If you have some swag to distribute, now is the moment.
• You can delegate interviews to a freelancer because you have too much on your plate. I suggest you draft the first version of the interview guide for them.

The steps to a successful user interview

Step 1. Scoping and sizing your effort

• What do you want to learn? Gather your team and consider what the desired outcome of the interviews is.
• Who is the target audience for this interview? It can be broad or very niche.
• How many people do you need to talk to to get significant feedback?
  In her book (french), Carine Lallemand states that there is no consensus, and 10–12 participants is a minimum. In Sprint, Jake Knapp mentions 5, but the goal is more specific as the interviews he describes are based on a prototype. A number in-between those 2 is acceptable, I’d say 8 per persona is safe.
• Who from your company will be involved in this process?
  Ideally, I believe anyone from a tech company should take turns attending or running interviews every once in a while.
  Interviews are more effective when there is an interviewer and a note-taker. Based on my experience, two is also the maximum, as it can be very intimidating for users to speak their minds in front of strangers, especially in a video call, especially if they are doing something else at the same time. However, it is possible to run an interview alone. In this case, you will need to record it and write a transcript afterward. Taking notes while interviewing will make you less available to your interviewee, and isn’t respectful as you will have less eye contact. If your user refuses to be recorded, explain that you will have to take notes. In my experience, the rhythm is not as fluid when you do this, and should be a last resort.

Step 2. Building your interview guide

User interviews usually follow an interview guide you prepared beforehand. However, this should only be used as a guide. Feel free to let your user jump to topics you had planned for later in the conversation. Flexibility is key; it’s more important to maintain a natural flow.

Creating an interview guide may take some time, but this effort is worthwhile. You can reuse it for multiple interviews and make adjustments as needed. Bear in mind that the interview should not exceed 30–45 minutes; otherwise, it can become tiring for the user.

Let me walk you through the steps!

• Introduction
  Arrive five minutes early. For remote meetings, ensure your device is charged and you are in a quiet environment. If you are using Bluetooth earphones, make sure they are charged and the sound settings are correct. Dress appropriately, and make sure your background looks professional.
  Prepare to be friendly and respectful. Make eye contact, smile, and appear interested. Greet them, ask how they’re doing, thank them for taking the time for the interview, and give them a moment to chat, if that’s what they want. This is a great opportunity to build rapport and trust. Lastly, introduce everyone attending.
  After this is done, I like to walk them through some basics. This interview will focus on their honest feedback about the product; we are not judging them as people and it won’t hurt our feelings if the feedback is negative or if they didn’t understand something. I explain that this feedback will be shared with the rest of the team to improve the experience. In some businesses, it can be beneficial to offer to escalate this feedback anonymously. For instance, I worked at a health tech startup, and patients were concerned that if they said anything negative, we wouldn’t do our best to help them succeed in their treatment. Once we understand each other, I ask if I can record the interview, and explain that I can stop anytime if they don’t feel comfortable. If they refuse and I’m alone, I explain that I will need to take notes during the interview.
• Demographics
  Ask a few questions to understand who you are talking to, their age, location, their jobs, and anything relevant to your business, but keep it short.
• Generic questions about your core USPs
  A unique selling proposition (USP) is what makes your product different and/or better than the competition. Begin asking participants about their process prior to using your product, or if they are yet to use it, inquire about the method they use to complete the focus task of your product.
• Generic questions about your product
  To gain a better understanding of how users discovered your product, why they are using it, and how they feel about it, ask them to tell you about the last time they used it to achieve a task. You’ll get more detailed, real-world answers.
• Specific questions about your product
  You can now ask questions about various aspects of our product that you want to investigate. Begin with broad questions by asking what they think or feel about particular aspects. I suggest you have more specific questions ready, in case they are not very talkative. Just remember to ask open-ended questions so they don’t answer with a yes or no.
• Wrapping up
  Close the interview by letting them know this will be the last question. I like to ask, “If I gave you a magic wand, what would you change about our product?” This playful angle makes it easier for users to share their biggest frustrations. Once they answer, thank them and remind them that their feedback is key to improving the experience. Let them know they will receive a thank you message with their incentive, and that they can contact you if anything else arises.

Step 3. Defining the incentives

I once read that any user willing to spend time with you in an interview should be incentivized. I will add a bit of nuance.

• Ideally, incentives shouldn’t be the main motivation to participate in an interview. In France, it is usually customary to offer between 5–10€ for an hour of the interviewee’s time or a sample of the product.
• It also depends on what your product is. When working in health tech (fertility), the product team had agreed incentives were not the best idea, so we decided not to give any… and yet users were very involved, they kept coming and were willing to help us make progress.

I’ll leave it up to you to determine what the best incentive is depending on what your company is doing. Here are some examples I have seen in the past:

• Gift cards
• A sample of your product
• A discount for a future purchase (great in e-commerce)
• A gift on their behalf to a charity

Step 4. Recruiting users

Recruiting users can be time-consuming if you don’t know where to start. Here are a few ideas:

• Active recruitment
  Some colleagues from other teams (marketing, user services, engineering) may be able to help you come up with a list of users or leads, but depending on the size of your company, you may have to adapt and go search that info yourself. You can also ask a third-party company to recruit leads. When actively recruiting and filtering the people contacted, you’ll need to email users to find volunteers. Here’s a template; feel free to customize it to your tone of voice:
  Object
  “Your feedback would be helpful”
  Body
  “Dear [name],
  My name is [name] and I work as a designer at [Company].
  I wished to get in touch as one of our key roles is to ensure that our service is as good as it possibly can be for our users.
  What I would like to do is to invite you to a 30-minute meeting, either by phone or video, to talk with you about your experience. If you are comfortable with this the conversation will be recorded.
  We are all passionate about getting the product right for our users, but to do this it is important for us to understand what is working and what more we could do.
  If you feel you can and would be happy to talk with us about this, would you be kind enough to let me know by email? I will then contact you to arrange a time for a meeting. I understand that you might be busy, so I would do my utmost to find a time to suit you.
  I look forward to hearing from you and taking this forward if you are happy to do so.
  Best regards”
• Organize passive recruitment
  If you are a french speaker, the story below explains how Lunii has achieved passive recruitment by adding a Calendly button to their customer satisfaction email.

Automatiser sa Discovery : quand vos utilisateurs viennent vous voir…

• Stay on top of things
  I strongly recommend keeping track of those you contact and interview to prevent reaching out to the same people too frequently.

Step 5. Setting up the interview

Once you get a reply, ask for their availability and send an invitation. If your business requires to respect their anonymity, make sure their names don’t show up in the event title. Provide instructions on how to join the call and make it easy for them. Additionally, I suggest sending a friendly reminder the day before to avoid no-shows. Boomerang is great for this.

Step 6. Running the interview

You have your guide, so everything should be fine. But what if the user has an unexpected reaction? Or remains silent? Here are some tips and tricks to keep things going.

• If the user is quiet, ask specific but open-ended questions. Guide your user and prompt them to tell you more by saying incomplete sentences such as “and so you felt…?”. Even if these interviews may be uncomfortable, refrain from responding yourself.
• If the user is mad at your company, apologize and take the time to listen. Don’t force them to go through the full interview if they just want to say their piece. Make sure to take notes, promise to pass on the feedback to the relevant people, and ensure that a follow-up is conducted.
• I once had a user have a meltdown during an interview. If this happens, bear in mind that they don’t have to go through this. Stop recording, and offer to stop here or postpone. Let the user decide whether to continue or not, with or without their camera on.
• If your user is unclear, ask them to rephrase. You can also rephrase yourself, but it is a slippery exercise. Make sure you don’t introduce any new ideas when doing this, as you have to be honest and unbiased.
• If your user is ecstatic, here is an optional (and maybe unpopular) idea. Think about your friends from marketing and ask your users if they would consent to writing a testimonial or being contacted by the marketing team.
  In the past I have often seen marketing or senior management willing to use those interviews to achieve promotion or gather content for investor decks, asking me to target only a specific segment or happy users. This was the best tradeoff I could think of to be a team player while making sure the body of the interview remained a sanctuary. You’re welcome.

Step 7. Sending over a thank you message

The interview is now over. Allocate 20 minutes to complete the work. Send a thank-you message and include any incentive, if applicable. Here is a template of mine, feel free to adapt it to your tone of voice :

Object:
“Thank you for your time”

Body:
“Dear [name],

This is just to say a huge thank you for your helpful comments when we spoke to you about your experience with [product name]. We have taken them on board and will use your feedback constructively to improve our product. Please, feel free to contact me if there is anything else you would like to add.

[Optional paragraph] Perhaps we could have one final request, if you feel you are happy with the service, would you agree to write an anonymous testimonial about your experience with us? There is absolutely no obligation. Our marketing team would like to display a few of them on our website, and also to share them with the companies we work with so they have an idea of how the service is perceived by our users.

Finally, thank you once again for your help. Making this experience as smooth and as easy as possible for others is incredibly important to the whole team, which is why your feedback is invaluable.

All best”

Step 8. Cleaning up your notes

It is time to write the transcript. You should store a link to the recording of the interview along with your notes.
Remember, a video of your user is user data, so make sure you are compliant with the relevant privacy regulations. I delete mine after 6 months out of safety.
If you have the budget to use a tool to generate a transcript, I have used Trint in the past and it was great.

In your transcript, feedback can then be sorted among categories. I like to use the following for more visibility with color codes:

• signs of satisfaction (red)
• signs of dissatisfaction (green)
• opportunities (yellow highlight)
• verbatim (bolded text)

Step 9. Sharing with your team

If you are using a tool to aggregate user feedback, now is the right moment to add these insights there and link them to your candidate features.

I also enjoy setting up a public Slack channel to share transcripts. In my handover message, I provide the key details of the user profile and the primary insights from the interview.

• If the user has consented to work with marketing, I’m informing them and tagging the relevant people.
• If the user was mad at us, I am tagging the stakeholder involved.
• If the key learning involves a specific team, I am tagging its leaders so they can cross-post with their teams.

Wrap up

I hope this story will encourage you to try user interviews.

I believe this discipline should be democratized to anyone working at a small or a medium-sized tech company, so they can get a chance to get into actual users’ minds and have more impact on their work.

Designers are the voice of the user and should have the material to challenge decisions thanks to their knowledge of users. User interviews are a great way of acquiring this knowledge.

Let me know in the comments if you have decided to give it a shot!