MProduct <Education>: Conducting User Interviews
Welcome to MProduct Education. The primary function of this biweekly series is to consistently provide aspiring product managers (PM’s) at the University of Michigan with tools that can be used throughout their career as a PM. Whether you have just learned the operating functions of a PM or are well into your career within the realm of product, our educational content will always be created for those hungry to push their boundaries of PM knowledge.
This piece’s focus: User Interviews
What is a User Interview?
As product managers, our mission is to own an aspect of a product from start to finish in a way that is both efficient and effective. A successful product is not one that has the most cutting-edge features, nor is it one that holds the most complexity. Rather, successful products are ones that provide the most value to the user. I will repeat that once more: successful products offer the most value to the user. Therefore, we must understand exactly what a user needs and doesn’t need from the product that the manager is overseeing. User interviews are used to identify how we can add product value for the user.
A user interview is a type of research technique used to obtain qualitative analysis from product users. These structured interviews help researchers understand how the users feel about, think about, interact with, and are motivated by a certain product. As product managers, the main questions that we should be thinking about are: Who are the users? What are they trying to do? What are their pain points? On the contrary, a user interview is NOT an informal chat, a product idea pitch, nor a focus group.
At first, user interviews may seem daunting. Many individuals interested in product management are not researchers, nor have they completed any sort of formal research before. As a result, user interviews are often conducted incorrectly, which could lead to inaccurate responses that may skew the understanding of certain users. This means that the structure of an interview is extremely important in order to get the most out of our time. Luckily, we have laid out eight simple steps to follow that will ensure the development and execution of an excellent user interview:
1. Define a goal for the interview.
It is extremely important for a product manager to first identify a problem statement before they conduct an interview. For a financial transaction company, this could include: Why do people use online payment services? How do people use online payment services? What are the different types of interactions users make with their online payments? In other sectors, such as social media, some problem statements could be: How do people interact with our platform? Where do users tend to fall off our platform? Why do users use our platform? Problem statements are generally a bit vague but are still very much possible to answer by simply asking the user questions. In general, we should figure out what we want to learn beforehand.
2. Do not make assumptions.
It is easy to make assumptions in order to move through an interview fast. Don’t. We should have the courage to ask “stupid questions,” which are basic inquiries about a user that may initially seem obvious. Examples of stupid questions you should ask are “what does your organization do and what do you do?” or “what is the function of X product?”, even if we are in the same organization and think we know the answer. Often, we may be surprised at the nuanced answer that we receive, which may turn into valuable information down the line.
3. Be consistent.
Product managers should develop a similar structure for all interviews of the same topic. That way, they can compare interviews with each other side-by-side in order to better glean key insights. We suggest that interviewers develop a base of questions ahead of time, and then ask additional follow-up questions as needed. Note, developing a foundational pool of question may take a long time. Here is a brief example of a list of base questions:
a. Tell me about the last experience you had with using X.
b. What is the most important thing you use X for?
c. How often do you see yourself using X?
d. Describe to me something that caught your eye on the platform. Why did it catch your eye?
e. Think about the last time you used Y and didn’t like the app. What was the reason why you didn’t enjoy that experience?
f. Why do you think someone would use the Y marketplace?
g. How do you see yourself interacting with the Y marketplace?
h. Think about the last time you interacted with another user. How and why did you do it?
4. Do not ask leading questions.
A large mistake that we often make is to prime the user with certain pieces of information when asking our questions. For instance: “A lot of users enjoy our analytics dashboard — what do you think about it?” We have just informed our user of the main consensus of the crowd, which will deeply influence the user’s answer to the question. We do not want to do this, but instead, keep the questions as objective as possible.
5. Listen to your user.
For a typical one-hour interview, around 5-minutes should be devoted to asking questions, while the other 55-minutes should listening. Most of our time should be spent listening to the user, not asking or leading up to questions. Questions should be as broad as possible in order to deliver the best possible results. An example could be “what do you think about the homepage of X?” or “tell me about a time when you interacted with Y?” Additionally, we should not ask binary questions, such as “yes or no” questions, unless they are for clarification.
6. Be thorough.
We should not ask surface-level questions; our goal is to always dig deeper into the minds of our users. Even though we should be consistent with our baseline of questions, we should not be scared of deviating and asking more interesting questions to gain additional insight if something specific during the interview captures our attention. This will enable us to extract certain key bits of information from the user that we ordinarily would not have obtained.
7. Ask about specific examples.
Product managers always try to extract the “real truth” from users. What is means, is that it is important to understand what the user was actually thinking during a time when they used our product, as opposed to what they guess they were thinking. We should ask our users to think about specific instances where they felt certain emotions when dealing with our product. An example is “recall a specific time when you had a poor ad experience on X; why did you not like it?” or “when was the last time you really enjoyed Y feature on Z app; why was it enjoyable?” This way, we learn much less about what our users speculate, but instead about what they are thinking in real-time as they use our product.
8. Document your work.
We must always try to record the information from user interviews from different perspectives. This could mean taking notes on a laptop, while taking a voice recording, while also taking a video of the user’s expressions as they answer questions — with the user’s permission of course. We do not need to necessarily capture all the information that we hear, but it is good practice to have user data from different angles. It is adamant, however, that we effectively synthesize all the information that we collect and condense it into a succinct recommendation that will guide future product development. That is the goal of user interviews, after all.
User interviews are a key method of understanding user experience with different products, and are, therefore, a crucial tool for any aspiring product manager. They are a fantastic way to discover problems that current users are facing, as well as possible solutions to these issues. They can explain what the user does or does not value, which will guide how we improve our products. User interviews, when conducted correctly, will lead to accurate responses that will clarify our understanding of certain users. Therefore, it is extremely important that product managers follow good user interview practices in order to achieve the best results that will help them drive good, informed product development.
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References:
Thornton, P. (2019, April 8). How to conduct user interviews. Retrieved from https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-conduct-user-interviews-fe4b8c34b0b7.
University, Y. (2019). User Interview Example Questions. Retrieved from https://usability.yale.edu/understanding-your-user/user-interviews/user-interview-example-questions.
