A designer guide to interviewing users
How to find out why people want certain things
User research helps us to better understand peoples lives. It helps us to transform needs and feelings into relevant products and services.
Another nice add-on is that insights gathered by research can be ammunition to convince your client or manager to continue with a certain feature or to maybe even pull the plugs.
In this article I would like to zoom in on one of my favourite user research methods: Customer Interviewing. I will provide you with practical tips and tricks that can help you with your own interview sessions.
About customer interviewing
Pros
- It’s super effective to empathise with your customer. Try to ‘expose’ all designers in your team to real customers as much as possible. This helps the team with designing for the customer instead of for themselves.
- If you’re in the early stages of concept development, interviews are an ideal way to gather inspiration and insights to base your new concepts on.
- If you’re seeing weird behaviour in your quantitative data sources, interviews are perfect to discover the reasons behind certain behaviour.
Cons
- Interviews are labour-intensive because you’ll need a group of 8–15 customers to get enough data to base your insights on. A smaller group of people makes it harder to judge the data as significant.
- People have different senses of humour throughout the day. Also, they have the urge to make themselves a bit more perfect than they really are. That’s why not all interviews are fully naturalistic. However, you can get pretty close to the right questions.
- People have a hard time explaining how they will behave in the future or answering if they will use your new product or service. That’s why customer interviews are not for predicting future behaviour.
What you need to prepare
First of all, you need a research goal. What is it you will be researching? What is it you will not be researching? Set yourself some boundaries to give you focus. Some examples of research goals that I used in the past:
“Find out how frequent customers prepare for doing groceries.”
“Find out how dairy farmers make sure the quality of their milk is sufficient.”
Finding participants
When it comes to recruiting participants there are companies specialised in finding the right participants for your request. A less expensive option is to get permission to use the customer files as a starting point of recruiting your participants. I guess there are more possibilities for finding the right people.
You’ll manage.
However, it can be quite a hassle to recruit participants that’s why it’s safer to starts a few weeks before the actual interview. If you’re recruiting without a recruiting company make sure to recruit 1 or 2 extras. In my experience, there’s always someone who can’t make it.
I mostly speak with 7 or 8 participants. This should be enough to avoid hearing the same stories over and over again. Depending on the topic or the variety of customers you have you can decide whether you need more. Be aware that every extra participant is also extra time interviewing and analysing. No need to make things too hard for yourself if it’s not needed, right?
Find a suitable compensation for the participants that are giving you a helping hand. A coupon, money or something they appreciate. You be the judge of that.
Braindump
Next up is a brain dump. Write down as many assumptions, thoughts and brain farts you have on the research topic. You can do this alone, but I prefer doing this in a bigger group.
If you’re in a group this will help you to get rid of your own assumptions while hearing other people’s thoughts. Other people’s assumptions can be quite fascinating though.
This brain dump will help you with writing questions later on.
Batman and Robin
When doing interviews I prefer to bring a sidekick along to assist with keeping the interviewing going and ask related questions that I didn’t think about or forgot to mention. Every Batman needs a Robin, right?
Lead interviewer (Batman)
- This is the main point of contact for the participant. It can be quite confusing for a participant to talk with two people at the same time. This helps provide focus.
- Batman is in charge of the interview and decides whether to continue to a different section of the interview or to dive a little deeper in the subject.
- Interviews need to have a smooth flow. You want the participant to feel relaxed and to open up and tell interesting stories. Batman is responsible to make sure the interview flow feels good.
- One important task is to involve Robin. I prefer to do this between each interview section. In that case, Robin has enough time to make notes and dive deeper into something that he didn’t understand or wants to know more about. If Robin bumps in whenever he wants the interviewer loses control.
Notetaker (Robin):
- During the interview, Robin will take notes that help him dive into the topic later on. These notes will also help with analysing the interview.
- The note taker can ask questions to the participant when the lead interviewer asks him to. I prefer to do this after each interview section.
- Helps the lead interviewer to keep the flow going. When the lead interviewer becomes less focused over time the note taker can help out.
- It’s important to make sure that the note taker knows about the basic rules of asking questions. Examples can be found below in this article.
Robin can be a co-worker, your client, your manager or a different stakeholder. In my experience, it’s good to bring clients to this kind of sessions to let them empathise with their customers.
How to formulate your questions
Asking the right questions in the correct order is a tricky part. One important insight is that you want to avoid asking questions where someone can simply answer with “Yes” or “No”.
Creating the basic structure of your interview
Mostly I picture a simple customer journey in my head which is divided into different phases. For example:
Orientating → Deciding → Buying → Usage
I create questions that fit in each phase making sure I cover the entire journey of the research goal that I’m trying to understand. This way I try to not miss out on important parts.
Tip: Your basic structure is just for yourself. It’s no harm if the participants talk about a later phase while your structure says to ask a question in about the first phase. Be flexible.
The different types of questions
I selected 4 different question types for myself to make the process of coming up with questions a lot easier. These work for me but I’m sure you can come up with a lot more categories. If you have any suggestions I’m happy to hear your thoughts.
1. Functional questions
Most of your interview questions are functional to get insights for your research goal. These make up the the main body of your interview. Make sure to frame all questions as open questions.
- Can you describe [x] for me?
- Why is [ x ] important for you?
- Who has an influence on [ x ]?
Tip: Follow up the answers with a “Why” questions to make sure to get the most out of the answers.
2. Emotional questions
As a designer, I’m always interested in how customers feel when using a product or service. Questions you could answer to your customer can be:
- How did it make you feel when you used [ x ]
Tip: Because feelings are hard to describe a great option is to make a set of cards with emotions and let them pick a few cards that they connect with. This also makes the participant feel less like he or she is visiting a psychiatrist.
3. Recent event questions
Describing topics, in general, are often hard. Try to relate to something that the participant has recently done. If you’re curious about how someone prepares his or her meal this could be an interesting way:
- What did you eat last night?
- How did you decide that meal?
- Is that a typical way for you to decide that?
Tip: It’s easier for a customer to answer something that recently happened. Try to zoom out from there.
4. Extreme questions
You want to get a clear picture of the pains and gains a customer faces. I always include one or two extreme questions in my interview. For example:
- What was the most memorable meal that you prepared?
- What was the worst experience you had while doing grocery shopping?
Tip: Often customers come up with very personal frustrations or joys. Try to dive deeper into these answers. Often there are some latent needs there.
How to conduct your interview
When you’re good to go, there are a few basic rules you should remember while conducting your interview.
Record your interview
I use the dictaphone app on my phone and Photo Booth on my laptop so I have both a video and 2 audio recordings. Believe one of your recordings will fail one day. Make sure to back it up with an extra recording.
Don’t become friends
Humans have a need to connect with each other. When becoming too friendly you might influence the answer the participant gives.
Your goal is to find answers for your research goals. Not to find out if you both like the same band.
Stay neutral
It’s tempting to finish your participant's sentences or to give examples that could steer your participant's answers in a way that participants wouldn’t say themselves. Pick your words carefully.
Don’t become a know-it-all person
Participants might pronounce words wrong or say false facts. Don’t correct your participant, this might transform you into a know-it-all person and makes the participant feel uncomfortable.
Only correct them when it feels safe to do so.
Shut up
Even when it becomes awkward. If you don’t ask a follow-up question the participant will fill this silence with interesting insights. Believe me.
Ask for the obvious
Don’t leave room for your own interpretation.
Let the participant explain their behaviour in full detail. The obvious explained by your participant might still surprise you.
Keep your recordings on!
When you’re at the end of your interview keep your recording on.
Often the participant might tell you the most interesting thing when he has the feeling that he’s finished.
Analysing your interview
Transcribing
I prefer to write full transcriptions of all audio and video tapes. The benefit of transcribing everything is that I can relive the interview all over again while reading it.
There are companies specialised in transcribing your interviews but I also like to do it myself so I already know which quotes are interesting and which aren’t.
I use VLC software to re-listen my tapes on a reduced speed. This makes all the participants sound like drunk fools but it makes it easier to type while listening.
Clustering
When you have all your transcriptions it’s time to find a group of people that are willing to help you with marking all the interesting quotes and insights. This could be the same group as you used in the preparation phase for the brain dump. Or you just use Robin since he knows a lot about the subject.
Print all your transcriptions out and start marking down interesting quotes. Cut them out and start putting them on the wall.
Cluster quotes that are similar. These clustered quotes will become your insights. It doesn’t matter whether their positive, negative or neutral. They’re insights, that’s what matters.
Tip: Analysing and clustering seem like a simple step after conducting the interview. Make sure you do reserve enough time for this. It’s the insights you’ve been looking for from the start. Don’t rush it!
I hope this article could be of any help in your own research. If you have any suggestions or questions about it please let me know in the comments below.
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