5 Tips on Interviewing your Users

For my UX Design class at General Assembly I decided focus on designing a project management tool specifically geared towards design teams working in technology. If you work in technology you’ve probably used at least one of JIRA, Pivotal Tracker, Basecamp, or Trello. Although these apps are well constructed and feature rich, I had a sinking feeling that they weren’t what design teams were looking for. After interviewing several designers, product managers, project managers, and engineers I was able to identify several pain points within their current workflow. I learned much more than I though I would from interviewing people. In the past when I do any kind of project I have made the mistake of jumping right in and starting to design and develop the idea. Taking the time to interview users before even deciding on the details of my ideas has already saved me a ton of time. If you want to interview people for your ideas here’s a few tips I learned along the way.

Make sure you have a list of questions you know you want to ask everybody. It’s really easy to go into an interview thinking that you can just wing it and end up with valuable feedback. Each interview will inevitably go in a different direction, but having a set of questions that you’ve asked everyone will help you identify patterns and trends.
Don’t be afraid to go off script. Although having a rigid set of questions I know I wanted to get through is helpful, when you hear your interviewee say something unexpected be sure that you dig deeper. It’s the unexpected things that people say that will teach you the most. Don’t be afraid to probe deeper and deeper with your interviewee on whatever their expertise is.
Talk to people you know and people that you don’t know. It’s likely that if you have an idea for something you will know people who might be interested in it. You should definitely talk to those people within your network. Chances are that those are the people who will be willing to talk to you the most and give you some of the most in depth information. Talking the strangers, on the other hand, will show you points of view that you may never have thought of in a million years. I chose to just go into a coffee shop in San Francisco and talk to every single person who was sitting by themselves. Parts of the experience were uncomfortable, but I also learned a great deal. Even if you end up talking to people who are not you don’t think are your target audience keep the conversation going. You never know what you’ll find.
Accept the fact that your first couple of conversations aren’t going to be very good. You’re going to feel like you’re not getting anywhere. This is where most people give up, decide they already know what they want to make, and start creating. Chances are that you don’t know what you have to make. Most start ups fail. Most products go unused. Most ideas go glossed over. Don’t do that. Dig deeper and get out of your comfort zone. Talking to strangers, and sometimes acquaintances, can be exhausting but know that it will be worth it when you finally create something that matters.
Try gathering requirements for your product before you interview anyone. You don’t have to go all out on this step. Think of it has the rough draft for your rough draft. The purpose of trying to design something without any real knowledge is to just help yourself realize what you might be missing. You’ll start realizing that there’s actually a lot you don’t know and a lot more that you want to ask people about. As soon as you come to this realization take all the design work you just did and throw it out. It’s time to start over.