The Art of the User Interview
10 practical tips for beginners in UX Research
As humans, we understand if we want to know more about someone, we should talk to them. Today, user interviews remain one of the most common tools for user research by both beginners and expert UX practitioners, as an age-old research method that is both accessible and potentially very effective.
What are user interviews and why do we need them?
User interviews involve learning about what users think or feel about a product, service, or problem, by talking to them directly and asking them questions. To build good products and services that solve real problems, we need to understand the people who experience them.
The user interview is a type of generative research method used to explore the problem space at hand, identifying opportunities by gaining a deeper understanding of the needs and challenges that users face. What makes user interviews so popular and effective is that they allow us access to our users’ experiences, thoughts, and beliefs, gathering qualitative insights that we cannot obtain through surveys, analytics, or other quantitative methods.
“To find ideas, find problems. To find problems, talk to people.” — Julie Zhuo, former VP of product design at Facebook
The importance of a good user interview
If conducting user interviews is as easy as asking a couple of questions, why do we still struggle with getting the most out of user interviews?
A good user interview consists of much more than just asking questions. Your interview data should answer your research questions well — to do that, not only do the responses you gather from your participants need to be relevant, but also well-developed and sincere. Done correctly, this can give you rich and valuable insights into how a user thinks and feels about the product or problem.
At 55 Minutes, I had the opportunity to work on the design process for the TeamTalk project* and learn through observation, dry-run practices, and conducting actual interviews. I hope these learning points will be useful to anyone navigating their own journey with user research. Let’s proceed!
Learning from observation
I started by sitting in and taking notes for a couple of user interviews (led by the 55 Minutes team of UX researchers). I picked up valuable dos and don’ts by learning from those who are experienced at their craft. When preparing for user interviews, you should:
1. Prepare a discussion guide
Have a well-crafted set of questions that target your research question or problem statement. User interviews are typically semi-structured — they follow a series of structured questions that are mostly open-ended, leaving space for the interviewer to explore other questions that might come up during the interview, based on what they say.
You will always gather more detailed and useful responses by sharpening your attention on what matters. In a team, using a standard list of questions to guide your user interviews enables everyone to go into them with a shared focus when you have more than one person conducting different sessions. Even on your own, a discussion guide helps to anchor the conversation to what’s important in order to find out what you really need to know.
Using the same set of questions to elicit responses from different participants also helped to structure our interview data, making it easier to interpret and map our findings later on!
2. Have two interviewers
It’s useful to delegate responsibilities in a user interview according to two distinct roles (but not more than that, since too many people might overwhelm the participant):
Main interviewer. This person is the main facilitator of the entire session. They establish rapport with the participant, lead the conversation by asking questions, and close the interview.
Assistant interviewer (or notetaker). This notetaker records key details of the participant’s response into succinct points that can be referred to later during the process of data interpretation and analysis. The assistant interviewer also helps the main interviewer keep an eye on the time, and ensures that they don’t miss out on asking any questions. (The assistant interviewer is free to ask any follow-up questions that are needed too!)
Although interview sessions are typically recorded with permission from the participant, taking down interview notes in real-time helps you capture compelling quotes and insights as they occur. Automated transcription services may be a viable alternative, but they’re hardly free of error — you still need a human eye to run through the transcript to iron out mistakes, or listen to the recording again to ensure that no nuances were lost — and besides, taking notes on your own can help you process the interview better too.
Separating the roles of facilitator and notetaker during the session can be tremendously useful. All of it goes towards your goal of collecting rich interview data and making sure that you don’t miss out on any potentially important information.
Learning through practice
I did a practice round before conducting interviews with real users. This extra step goes a long way, because observing user interviews and leading them are vastly different experiences. Here are some things to keep in mind:
3. Create space
Create space for yourself the way you would prepare for anything that requires mental and emotional effort. Assuming the role of the main interviewer takes energy; it puts you in the driver’s seat and demands skills of facilitation, active listening, and empathy.
Everyone does this differently. Scouting for tips, I asked the UX Research team at 55 Minutes how they take time to create space for themselves:
To empty any thoughts or assumptions from interactions with previous participants, Hye Yoon makes sure that there is a time gap between her interviews. This time could be spent on a 10-15 minute walk, reading a light essay, or listening to some classical music (she recommends the Bach Cello Collection). She also makes it a point to document how she feels after conducting an interview by writing a simple note. Acknowledging her emotions — “whether it’s negative or positive, as I am a human, too” — helps her to be attentive to interview participants’ emotions as well.
For Aurelia, aside from making sure that she knows the interview guide thoroughly, she also tries to remind herself just before the interview: “Why am I doing this interview? What am I really trying to find out?” She notes down things she already knows about the participants (this could just be some information they filled in on the screener survey, for instance) that can help her build rapport with them later on during the interview.
4. Know your interview guide well
Knowing your interview guide helps you to stay focused, saving you from a situation where you might blank out and find yourself fumbling for what to say next. It also helps you to steer the conversation back on topic if it goes off on a tangent — or when you’ve sufficiently explored the user’s response to a particular question and are now ready to move to the next area of discussion.
The goal is not to have your questions blindly memorized so that you can tick them off as you go along (so, not like a grocery shopping list). To know your interview guide well, remind yourself of why you are asking each and every question. This enables you to maintain a strong and consistent focus on your research aims so that you know very clearly how to guide the conversation in that direction.
You can also categorize your list of questions according to different themes or concerns. Be closely familiar with them and give yourself an idea of how you might transition between those sections during the user interview.
5. Be mindful of the way you phrase things
Avoid questions that place pressure on the participant to respond in a certain way that may not reflect their true opinions or preferences.
Leading questions suggest a specific answer for the participant, compelling them to respond according to how the question or statement was phrased. (Eg. How do you feel about this improved version of feature A as compared to the older version?)
Loaded questions make implicit and unjustified assumptions that may be controversial, or carry a negative undertone directed towards the participant or subject matter in a way that would make them feel uncomfortable when responding. (Eg. What do you think of playing violent video games, given that research has shown they increase aggressive behavior?)
These may seem obvious, but can be easy to fall into unintentionally.
For myself, it was natural to want to sympathize with my interview participants as they shared their difficult experiences with me. In one interview, I responded with “that must have been so frustrating” at least a couple of times, although the user had not explicitly said that it was. I had labeled her experiences too quickly, when in fact, her experiences turned out to be much more complex than that. A less outspoken or direct participant might not have corrected me, or might have shaped their responses according to my assumption.
This leads me to the next point —
6. As an interviewer, be aware of your habits and reactions
As the interviewer, assume a neutral position that is devoid of judgment. While empathy is important and helps you build rapport with the other person, try to manage your reactions so that they do not influence your participant’s response — especially if you are investigating attitudes and beliefs towards potentially sensitive topics.
Everyone also has their own tendencies or mannerisms when speaking. For one, I caught myself with the unfortunate habit of trailing off or giving follow-up prompts too soon at the end of my questions. This was not ideal because it could dilute my questions and somewhat confuse the participant.
Filler words are also something many of us inadvertently use to buy ourselves time when articulating our thoughts. (My filler words are “like” and “actually”!) While they are used naturally in speech and not inherently harmful, too many filler words can affect the clarity of your questions. It’s good to be aware of how they may influence your participants’ responses during the interview.
Conducting the actual interviews:
Now we’re down to the actual interviews with real participants! Here are some other things to keep in mind when you’re ready for your first interview.
7. Your introduction and transitions are key
Avoid jumping straight into the interview. You may be feeling slightly nervous, but the participant may be too! Introduce yourself and build rapport to put your participant at ease. How you start the conversation and create trust with the person you’re talking with over the course of the interview affects the quality of the responses you receive.
In my first user interview, I was so focused on keeping time and staying on task that I neglected this important step. I could have taken more time to get to know my interviewee; this would have helped both of us feel more comfortable!
Transitions can make or break an interview. Ideally, you want to guide the flow of conversation naturally and not in a brusque manner (definitely not like you’re ticking questions off a checklist!) This was something I had not anticipated: on my first try, I realized that I was struggling with exactly how to move the conversation to the next question without coming off as a tad insensitive or worse, rude.
8. The questions are a guide, not a script
During the interview, you might want to go beyond the discussion guide based on what you’re hearing. If you find something different or unexplored in a participant’s response, ask more questions. Probe further and ask them why or why not, or unpack words that they use (Eg. you mentioned X, what do you mean by that? I’m curious about Y, could you tell me more about that time?).
Curiosity is an indispensable trait when you are learning about anything. Taking a genuine interest in your users — how they feel, what they do, why, and how — will inevitably lead you to new questions, which can lead to valuable knowledge.
9. Silence is okay — good, even
We’re used to treating silence like it’s something to avoid. We jump to fill awkward silences and race to give ourselves something to say.
But silence can be a powerful tool when used. Remaining quiet, and in turn signaling that you are continuing to listen intently, indicates that you wish to hear more of what the participant has to say. Often, this prompts the participant to further develop their response. (It also gives you time to recollect your own thoughts.)
Pauses in the conversation can also mean that the participant is taking time to process your question. People are thinking — let them think. Verbal prompts are sometimes necessary if the participant is lost for a response, but I’ve found that holding back for a while can sometimes improve the depth of the responses you receive!
10. Lastly, keep time
Interviews can go up to an hour, and your interview participants may be busy people. To respect everyone’s time, keep an eye on how much time you have remaining as you move the interview along. Your team can help you out with this by offering you a time check at some point during the interview.
Balance empathy with the rigor of asking the right questions
I’ve come to see user interviews as a practical art that calls for a balance of skills. Yes, good user interviews call for an empathetic approach and a curious mindset from the interviewer. They involve skills of communication. They also demand strong facilitation skills, a good team if you have one, and a clear, focused line of thinking to investigate your research aims.
But also know that they will never be perfect. Your experience with user interviews will give you the opportunity to critically reflect on what you did well and what you could have done better. In any case, mistakes can also become opportunities for new insights about your research topic.
All the best with your own user interviews! In our pursuit of improvement, it helps to remember why we conduct them in the first place — to understand our users so that we may solve the right problem.
*TeamTalk is an in-house project that seeks to improve the remote onboarding experience of new hires in companies.
Note: In light of the pandemic, interviews were conducted remotely. Virtual research is becoming increasingly important — for more in-depth tips on conducting research remotely, 55 Minutes also has a useful article on how to engage in empathetic practices during COVID-19.
A huge thank you to Wendy, Aurelia, and Hye Yoon, who guided me with invaluable feedback!
Charmayne interned at 55 Minutes in UX Research/Design. Interested in the intersection of art, technology, and human cognition, she studies Communications and New Media with an Interactive Media Development minor at the National University of Singapore. When not learning about human-centered design, she loves taking walks and exploring all sorts of new things like virtual reality games and rollerblading!
