User research: How to conduct great user interviews
Design is an inherently collaborative process. It involves deeply understanding problems and crafting solutions based on data, empathy, research, and a constant dialogue with users. But for great user research to happen, one must follow what happens in a context with little intervention. You are ultimately trying to understand the complexity of the context you are addressing. There is no set question, but a series of questions. It is a guided conversation and/or observation of an experience.
Interviews can be used as:
· Initial exploration.
· Gathering requirements.
· Understanding user needs and concerns.
· Capturing reactions of users to prototypes.
User interviews can be used to understand:
· The nature of certain situations, processes, relationships, systems or people.
· Gain insights into new phenomenon.
· Discover problems.
· Investigate and validate assumptions.
To conduct successful user interviews you should aim to follow these golden rules.
At its core, an interview is about questioning an interviewee. So let’s start with some questioning ‘do’s’ & ‘dont’s’:
Do
· Use open-ended questions with room for discussion, in order to collect quantitative data.
E.g. Instead of: “Do you find this website easy to navigate?” (closed yes/no answer).
Which of these two ‘prototypes’ do you find easier to navigate and why? (open).
· Delve deeper
e.g. “I noticed you called ‘x’ great… could you define great?” or “Why did you say that?”.
Don’t
· Don’t use leading questions: putting words into the user's mouth.
E.g. Instead of “This process seems a little over-complicated right?”.
The question could be as simple as: “what are you thinking whilst performing this task?”.
· Don’t use overly technical language and jargon. Use lay terms.
E.g. “In this second iteration, where can you locate the call-to-action?”
· Don’t overload questions, meaning do not ask too much in a single question, rather break-up into individual questions.
e.g. “What do you think about the colour scheme, navigation and placement of the navigation?
Could be broken down into a series of individual questions or A/B testing: “Does the menu bar appear to be in a logical place for you? Where else might you place it and why?.
Next up is… ‘Conduct’:
It sounds like common sense, but don’t be late! It will alter the interview and change your data collection. You may end up being flustered; the user may be frustrated with you. If you are late, give a very good reason why, as you don’t want to start on the wrong foot. Allow enough time and set up early.
Schedule the interview somewhere quiet with minimal distractions. Listen carefully, respectfully and give eye contact.
Try to always record answers with audio (with the interviewee’s permission of course). Refrain from writing answers down, but rather record time stamps if necessary, that you can later refer to. If you choose to only write you could lose key information and come across as rude/disinterested to the interviewee. Otter is an amazing free speech-to-text app for this, that can sync with your calendar and even suggest topics by scanning the collected text for repeatable words.
Refrain from judgement and do not give feedback on answers, but rather generic responses like. “OK”, “cool”. Remember this interview is not about you, it is about your user's experience, be that positive or negative. You can reflect on the user responses in detail later, in the post-interview analysis.
Active Listening
Your interviewee is kindly giving up their time to be interviewed. You owe them by being a respectful and engaged listener.
Honesty (from users) is the best policy.
Give a clear rationale about the context of the interview and if necessary, the question. Make it clear what the purpose of this interview is in relation to the project. How are these user’s answers going to help the process?
Make the interviewee aware that their answers and their opinion is valued and will have an impact. There are no right or wrong answers. Be clear that they can speak their mind and say what they truly feel. You want subjective user opinions. Make it clear they are not going to personally offend you.
Interviewee Led
The interviewer should be talking as little as possible, being certain not to talk-over the interviewee. Be patient. Give the interviewee time and space to think and reflect on their experience. Awkward silences are encouraged and can often lead to more honest feedback. Do not rush and provide multiple opportunities for the user to provide their feedback.
Analysis
Once the interview is complete. Sum up any responses you have collected and critique how they relate to your research questions. Think about any gaps in knowledge that you can fill.
If necessary re-define your research question and iterate (develop) your prototype before the next interview. This is great to do if you are testing paper prototypes or wireframes.
Strategies
Interviewing is just one of many user research strategies. You could also deploy the following, more creative strategies in place of, or within a user interview, to generate different responses. These may even result in better responses from certain users.
Shadowing
Observe users in their own environment using an object and/or performing a task e.g. observing how an elderly person uses a cash machine.
Diary
Ask users to build a relationship with a product and record their feelings and/or observations over time in the form of a diary or journal.
Cultural probes/Generative ideas
Though requiring more planning, these methods allow more creative ways for a user to express their opinions or ideas. You should aim to keep these activities relevant, engaging and easy to use. Some example of Cultural probes/Generative ideas are:
· Providing materials and objects to ‘tinker’ with, so that participants can explain a certain topic in the physical way of making.
e.g. Ask users to build a prototype out of materials.
· Constructing a game where you can problem solve a more abstract concept e.g. for cryptocurrencies: you could ask users to play as ‘miners’ or from an actual human ‘chain’.
· Sorting or storytelling through visual cards to explain an opinion.
· Asking users to create a collage from images, to express their feelings.
· Drawing.
For the final ‘generative idea’ of drawing. I continually use this method for product design projects with users, as it really helps certain users express themselves.
e.g. When testing an app I might print screenshots from the user test and ask the user to draw what they might expect to see or move visual/content elements around. This method has resulted in some excellent user interface ideas, together with a user, that our team may never have come up with ourselves.
Summary
Hopefully, these golden rules around questioning, conduct, listening, honesty and analysis help you in your future user research. As mentioned above, there are more creative ways of going beyond user interviews. Please comment on any strategies or examples you may have you used so that we can keep sharing ideas in our community.
Thanks for reading, please clap if you have enjoyed the article and feel free to follow Diagraam Design to learn more about design thinking and the design process.
Elliott
Diagraam Design
