How to Prepare for Moderating User Interviews as a Designer — The Mindset Shift
Designers welcome to the world of user research! If you’re reading this, you likely understand the crucial role user research plays in the design process. My name is Bharat Bondu, and I’m the UX Design lead at HousingAnywhere. Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege to moderate user interviews, and the experience has given me invaluable insights.
If you are a designer new to research, moderating successful user interviews can be challenging. This is often because you may still approach it from a designer’s perspective. To succeed, shifting your mindset and acting as a moderator is essential. In this article, I’ll share some key insights to help you make that shift and fully leverage user research to take your designs to the next level. Let’s get started without a delay.
1. Reset your goal
As a designer, entering a user research session can be an exciting, but nerve-wracking experience. You may feel like your goal is to prove that your design is the best solution. But, as the session progresses and the user can’t seem to spot the call-to-action button you placed on the screen, it’s easy to feel frustrated and ask “Why can’t you see it? It’s right there!”
However, it’s important to remember that your role in this interview isn’t a designer, but a moderator. , If you uncover issues with your design during the testing process, it’s not a failure as a designer. Instead, it’s a success as a moderator, providing valuable insights that can improve your design in the future. So leave behind your designer hat and focus solely on your role as the moderator.
Your goal is to understand the user’s perspective without expecting any specific outcome.
2. User is the expert, not you.
As designers, we invest a lot of effort in researching user personas, exploring various design solutions, and crafting the perfect design. It’s natural to feel confident and proud of our work and to believe that we have all the answers.
However, approaching a user interview with this mindset can be detrimental to the outcome. If we view the session as an opportunity to inspect and judge the user, we’ll miss the valuable insights they can provide. Instead, we should enter the interview with an empty mind, ready to learn from the user. This means being curious about their thoughts, understanding their mental model, and discovering how they perceive our design. When we embrace the idea that we don’t know everything, the interview will unfold more naturally, and we’ll gain valuable insights that can improve our designs.
Embrace the idea that we don’t know everything, the interview will unfold more naturally.
3. Curiosity fuels effective moderation
Moderating a user research session can be a challenging task, requiring you to simultaneously talk to the user, follow a script, process their responses, and determine the next question to ask. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed like “Everything everywhere all at once”.
However, there is a simple solution that can address these issues: cultivate a genuine curiosity about the user’s perception and remain open to learning how they view the world. This will allow you to have a more natural and free-flowing conversation with the user, as you’ll be able to ask more interesting questions based on their responses without feeling tied to a script. Stay curious, stay engaged, and enjoy the journey of discovery during the session!
Cultivate a genuine curiosity and enjoy the journey of discovery during the session!
These three factors helped me transform my mindset from designer to effective moderator during user interviews. I hope they will help you too. Remember to leave your designer hat behind the next time you conduct a user interview.
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