Conducting User Interviews in UX Research
Understanding the Why
User interviews are a powerful tool in any UX research toolbox. They are a fairly quick and simple way to gain valuable feedback from a user. Instead of focusing on quantitative data or the usability of the design, user interviews are more focused on the “why” from a user. Since they are typically in a one-on-one setting, you get the chance to delve into the subject and get a better understanding of your user’s feelings.
Even if the method is simple to learn and execute, there are still some important steps you need to take to properly conduct an interview. Since you want to make the most of the the time that you have, this preparation will help to better the experience for the user and provide more useful results as well.
Preparing for the Interview
Set the Goal
Before even starting to think about the interview itself, it is important to take a step back and look at the overall picture. You will need to talk to your team and relevant stakeholders to get an understanding of what the research is trying to accomplish.
Having these conversations will help to determine the most appropriate goal to set for the project. Some will try to skip this step and start to create questions right away, but this usually leads to less productive results. If you don’t take this time at the beginning, you will lose the central focus of your research.
Prepare Questions
Now with the goal of the project in mind, you will start to formulate questions that align with what you are trying to achieve. Conduct some of your own research to get a better understanding of the topic before you get started.
When writing questions, try not to lead or put any bias into what you are asking. You are trying to guide users to answer questions about a particular topic, but you still want to give them the power to form their own thoughts. To get the most valuable results, you want your users to be comfortable in speaking their own thoughts and opinions.
In the above example, the first question is leading the user to form a positive opinion of the feature. The second question has a better approach as it allows the user to think about their own feelings first before answering.
Practice Script
Once you have your questions ready, it is time to take them for a test run. Try to ask someone who is not directly involved with developing the questions for help. This could be a co-worker, stakeholder, or even a friend, just someone who has enough knowledge about the topic to be able to give realistic answers.
During this time, you may find it easy to bounce around and informally ask the questions, but try to keep everything as similar to a real interview as possible. You will want to really listen and respond to your tester, taking notes on where questions can be improved or where good follow-up questions can be asked. This will help you feel more comfortable and at ease for the flow of the actual interview.
Conducting the Interview
Connect with the User
At the beginning the interview, start off with an introduction of the project as well as yourself. You don’t want to spend an extended time on this, but you want to use this time to start gaining rapport with your user. This introduction is setting the stage to make the user feel more at ease and beginning a genuine conversation.
As you begin asking questions, start off with easy, conversational questions to start breaking the ice first. These questions should allow the user to introduce themselves and get them talking. You don’t want to start throwing them the hard-hitting questions right away.
Actively Listen and Adapt (But Keep on Track)
During the heart of the interview, use your question list as a reference, but don’t feel like you have to follow it word for word. This is the part of interviewing that takes the most practice as you want to strike the right balance between letting the conversation flow and staying on subject. You will want the conversation to lead itself whenever possible, which means you will sometimes be coming up with questions on the fly as you are listening.
However, there will be times when you have a very excited user who wants to talk about topics that may not pertain to your research. In these situations, there may be times where you will have to cut them off and graciously point them back in the direction of the question.
“I really appreciate your feedback on [thing they are talking about], but we are starting to run lower on time and I did have a few topics I wanted to cover, do you mind if we go to the next question?”
In this way, you are letting them know you are listening, but need to nudge them back onto your interview subject. As long as you show kindness and care for their opinions, users will have no problem redirecting their thoughts back on track.
Ask for Clarification
While you are having a very organic and flowing conversation, be sure to take a pause every once in awhile to ask for clarification on statements.
If you insert these types of follow-ups occasionally, it shows that you are actively engaged. These questions will often allow the user to think more about their statements and provide even richer answers. I have found that many times a user seems like they are done answering a question, but then a simple clarification prompt will bring them to a new tangent they hadn’t thought of before. These are the times where you get wonderful nuggets of new ideas that you can then further explore.
Wrap-Up and Follow-Up
Give Chance for Final Comments
When I’ve been on the other side of the table and answering questions for someone else, I’ve been frustrated when the interviewer closes the conversation without giving me a chance to make a final comment. It is such a small detail, but giving the user that chance to talk helps to ensure that they feel as if they were able to voice all of their opinions to you.
A new thought may have popped into their mind or your questions didn’t given them the chance to express the opinion. By giving the user this final chance, you will ensure that they feel heard.
Follow-Up Resources and Incentive
After your interview, it is extremely important for you to follow-up on any action items and incentives that resulted.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
-Maya Angelou
This Maya Angelou quote perfectly sums up the reason why this step is so important in an interview. If you think about it, the interviewee is often a user or potential user of your product so you want to leave a lasting positive impression. Make sure your user feel appreciated for their time and thoughts.
If there were certain points that were brought up during your talk, be sure to follow-up on them! Nothing is worse than thinking you had a connection and then being forgotten about. Also, it may seem simple, but if you have an incentive advertised, make sure to give it out in a timely matter and state the timeline in your conclusion. You never want your user to be left hanging and wondering when things will happen.
Conclusion
Overall, user interviews are a wonderful way to connect with your users and gain some valuable insights into what they are feeling and thinking about a subject.
As you begin these interviews for a research project, keep in mind that it is important to conduct multiple interviews with your users. In this way, you will be able to gather valuable overarching insights that give good qualitative data. You will also want to pair this research with quantitative research methods, such as survey research, to validate the insights you gain. Mixing multiple research methods provides the most valuable and complete research data about your project.
I hope that this guide has motivated you to continue using this valuable resource in your future research projects. It is personally one of my favorite research methods and I always feel like it provides interesting insights into how to improve our products.
