How I learned from my mistakes and improved my User Interviewing skills
A personal account of my mistakes and learnings from conducting User Interviews and simple tips for anyone looking to get better insights from their next interview session.
In this article, I am going to walk you through some of the things I have learned about conducting User Interviews. I will share my personal experience of making mistakes while interviewing users and improving upon them through reading books.
So, let’s get started with a brief introduction.
Introduction
I was new to UX, had conducted a few User Interview sessions and that’s when I realized that it wasn’t as simple as I thought it would be. It’s not that my interview sessions were bad, but each study had something that didn’t work out. Most of these were small details but I realize now that improving upon them can help uncover good insights.
Let me give you an example to make this a little clearer.
One of the mistakes I did in my initial days was asking questions in the same order as was in my script, even when the participant had already provided answers to them in a different question. I had no reason to ask these again as we had spent plenty of time going through these but I asked anyway.
Now, what is the problem with that? Participants can always answer again, right? That’s true but at times it backfires. When I ask something that they have already answered, many participants start to feel like I am not listening to them (I have seen this from their expressions). At times this is evident from their comments which often go somewhat like ‘Didn’t we discuss this before?’. It also confuses them because they start to wonder if their previous answers were incorrect.
Just like the one I mentioned above, I have come to acknowledge many other mistakes and have improved upon them over time. Note that by no means have I improved my skills just by pondering over the issues at night. They are consistent improvements that have come from reading a lot of articles and books.
This article will take into account one such book — ‘Interviewing Users’ by ‘Steve Portigal’. You will find the points in this article from page 13 to 27 of his book.
I will not repeat the details from this amazing book because you can read it yourself (his writing is really good by the way, highly recommended reading for anyone looking to improve their User Interviewing skills). What I will do though is provide a brief introduction to each point and then show insights into my experience from failing, learning, and then seeing results to those key points mentioned in the book.
6 Simple tips to improve your User Interviews
Brain Dump
In my first few studies, there was this strong curiosity to find something out. I didn’t think much about it since it’s good to have curiosity right? After all, I am researching to uncover new things. The problem is that you end up with a lot of bias.
When I was conducting the interviews, it almost felt like I already knew my user's problems and how to solve them. I was only waiting to hear some of the words that would make my research complete. If I hear them in the first interview, the research was done and everything after that was just extras for me.
But this is terrible for research. I missed out on important details from my participants, which could have been valuable for my team. It resulted in research that only fulfilled my personal wants and failed to bring out the user’s pain points.
How do you avoid this?
By doing a brain dump. If you have a team of people who are going to be part of the interview, ask everyone to write down their thoughts, assumptions, expectations, and beliefs on a wall before going in for the interview. If your team is remote then use some tools or just use a spreadsheet and add these details. If you are a team of 1 then go ahead and make a note of these in your diary.
The idea is to bring out what everyone thinks they already know. There are going to be contradictions but that’s fine. This exercise is essential as it allows your brain to be free from your opinions and go to an interview with an open mind.
“I’m curious, but I don’t know yet what I’m curious about”.
- Steve Portigal, author of ‘Interviewing Users’
Working on projects for far too long can often create bias and it’s absolutely normal to have an opinion when you have been working on something for quite some time. Just make sure to do this exercise. It has helped me be ready to absorb everything I can from the user.
Focus on the Interview
This can be a tricky one. We are all part of organizations and often have goals to reach. While it might be tempting to steer the interview in accordance with your goals, it’s something you should stop and think more about.
While working for a client, I remember a situation where I ended up asking questions that had no relation to the purpose of that study. Sometimes, participants will be able to answer it and you come out clean. Great! But most of the time the question will seem out of place even to the participant. This is bad because it causes confusion and even if you get good insights, it would probably lack a lot of contexts and cannot be used.
While going for an interview, focus on the interview. I find it helpful to read the purpose of the user interview again from the research plan. This makes it clear what I should be doing at the moment and that could be something like ‘exploring the different ways Shawn travels to office throughout the year’. It’s simple and guides me into what the next hour is all about.
Context is key
Context means whether we are recreating an environment that would closely match a real-world scenario. For example, the context for understanding uses of google spreadsheets could be to actually go into someone’s office and ask questions about the tool. This is a place where they would most likely be using the tool and it makes sense to question and observe them here.
Why is this important though? For starters, it’s easier for participants to answer your questions since they are in a familiar environment. Participants are surrounded by details they observe every day while going about their work which makes it easier for them to answer questions.
For example, maybe the user is unaware of certain formulas in spreadsheets and often uses a notebook close to him to do the calculation. While in office, he can do it right away but it wouldn’t be possible if he was sitting in a research lab. People tend to react to most things and we are often interested in those reactions. This invaluable insight could be lost if we bring the participant into another setting.
Also, bringing them into your context can often result in poor interviews. Users might not be comfortable or probably even struggle to remember things without any familiar cues from the environment.
I remember conducting interviews by calling people over to coffee shops (please don’t do this unless it’s about the coffee shop or something related). It was distracting and participants kept looking everywhere and even struggled to remember details. User interviews should not be a struggle— you are there to learn things the easy way by literally observing and asking questions.
I would say, remote interviews have worked far better for me since most users are at home which is often the environment in which they would use the product. But the best thing to do is to go over to their place of context.
Ask simple questions
You’ve probably heard people saying — ask stupid questions. Well, don’t do that. Think through your questions deeply, they are really important.
But what I would suggest is asking questions which you feel are really basic to you. Things you think about and feel like ‘should I even be asking this? Isn’t it obvious?’.
There were many sessions where I would just skip the simple questions feeling embarrassed to even ask them. But here's the catch, simple questions are often very open-ended and can reveal a lot.
I have learned this over time and it really is a revelation. In fact, I have asked basic questions like ‘How do you go about researching tourist places?’.
The answers I was expecting was ‘I go through blogs and apps’ but what I also got was ‘I go on Instagram and search for the location and see pictures put up by other people…I kind of prefer this since professional photographers can make most places look good but usual people like me will post more realistic pictures. I want to know how good the place really is’.
This was something that I could never think of, even though I know about this feature myself and have searched for locations myself. So, go on and ask simple questions, even if you are embarrassed.
Remove distractions
There was this one remote interview where the participant was at home and had many people over. She was constantly being distracted by someone coming into the room and asking something or the other.
Every time the participant would speak to this person, return to the interview and be like ‘I’m so sorry…So we were discussing…’ and then I would have to remind her. In fact, after this happened twice even I forgot what we were discussing (I got irritated I guess, and forgot). Also, this interview took close to 1.5 hours for me whereas all others were done in 30 mins.
That’s an important aspect that any interviewer needs to understand. After a certain point both you and the participant are going to be exhausted — they from speaking and all that remembering and you from listening. Distractions also tend to cloud the mind, making it difficult to remember things, at times things that you were talking about only a minute ago.
So, make sure to be clear about not having distractions. Be polite and upfront about it with your participants, so that your environment is distraction-free.
Listen carefully
Make sure that you are not just listening for the sake of it, knowing that you can always refer back to your recordings for insights. I would go ahead even say that most of your insights should be identified and noted within the interview session itself, by you or by someone who is helping you out.
Paying attention is important for two reasons. One, it helps you find key pieces of detail in your user’s stories so you can probe a little deeper in case you feel there could be something exciting to learn. Two, this also makes the user feel like you are interested in them and are not here just to get answers to a bunch of questions.
Another important detail is to make sure you look at the participant and face them. Even if you are empathetic and are keenly listening, don’t just keep staring at your notes or script. Make the user comfortable by facing them and being attentive about words. Use verbal nods like ‘hmm’ and ‘ok…’. That way users know that you are listening and are interested.
I have realized this because I do a lot of video recordings and have seen better results when I am being responsive. Listening to each line is important so that you can provide cues to participants about how you are interested in them.
