Using user interviews for requirements engineering
Research is a key component of the product design process. To design a product, you need to understand the users, the problem you’re solving, and the goal of designing the product.
A popular research method in product design is user interviews. A user interview is aimed at understanding the interests, goals, and motivations of the users. Insights from user interviews conducted at the start of a project can inform the product requirements.
What are product requirements? Product requirements describe the features of a product i.e what a certain product should do. There are several ways product requirements can be gathered for instance, through observation and business requirements, however, for products with a core focus on great user experience, interviews are a suitable method for deciding on the product requirements.
To conduct interviews, it’s important to define the goal of the interview and prepare beforehand, however, this article is not a guide on the user interview process. This article is focused on answering the question “How can I draw product requirements from information gathered in an interview?”
So, now you have a lot of information gathered from the interview, how do you make sense of it? How do you analyse the information collected to inform the product requirements?
- Define the goal
It is important to understand what you plan to achieve with the interview and how this fits into the overall objective of the project. An understanding of the interview goals will guide you in choosing a tool for conducting the interview e.g surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews etc. It will also inform the questions you will ask during the interview.
- Identify themes
A lot of unstructured information is collected in the process of interviewing users. To analyse the information collected during the interview, it is important to identify patterns. Patterns create a sense of order to the information collected during the interview. Affinity maps can be used for identifying themes and categorizing information.
- Prioritize findings
Once you have identified themes from the interview, revisit the goal of the research. Put the structured information you have from identifying the themes in the context of the goal of the interview. Prioritize and rank the patterns you have found based on their relevance to achieving the objectives of the project.
- Justify requirements
With the information you have from analysing your findings i.e the patterns or themes with the higher priority, the final step will be deciding on requirements. For instance, a requirement may be to “post comments” and a justification for the requirement may be “user wants to share and discuss ideas with friends.” The justification and priorities you assign the requirements will be informed by your findings from the interview.
- Present findings
This last bit is a bonus. There’s an audience waiting to hear all about the findings from your research. Thinking of the best way to communicate your recommendations to the stakeholders is important. With the knowledge of your audience, deciding if an interactive, straight-to-the-point PowerPoint presentation communicates your main findings and recommendations over a long-form essay of the case study should not be difficult.
