Learn how to interview users, ask the right questions and work with insights
Interviewing users is the job of your User Research team or your UX people? Maybe you want to consider diving deeper into this topic to get in direct contact with your users yourself. It can be quite eye-opening to see users using your product in action while being able to ask any question you like. Or, maybe you simply don’t have another chance and can’t rely on a sophisticated team that’s actually taking care of all research. In this case, we’ve collected the best books for you to learn how to interview users, ask the right questions and work with the insights you gathered.
Interviewing Users
How to Uncover Compelling Insights
by Steve Portigal
Why read?
Interviewing is a foundational user research tool that people assume they already possess. Everyone can ask questions, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Interviewing Users provides invaluable interviewing techniques and tools that enable you to conduct informative interviews with anyone. You’ll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people.
176 pages, Rosenfeld Media 2013
UX Research
Practical Techniques for Designing Better Products
by Brad Nunnally and David Farkas
Why read?
One key responsibility of product designers and UX practitioners is to conduct formal and informal research to clarify design decisions and business needs. But there’s often mystery around product research, with the feeling that you need to be a research Zen master to gather anything useful. Fact is, anyone can conduct product research. With this quick reference guide, you’ll learn a common language and set of tools to help you carry out research in an informed and productive manner.
256 pages, O’Reilly Media 2016
Talking to Humans
Success starts with understanding your customers
by Giff Constable, Frank Rimalovski and Tom Fishburne
Why read?
Talking to Humans is a practical guide to the qualitative side of customer development, an indispensable skill for vetting and improving any new startup or innovation. This book will teach you how to structure and run effective customer interviews, find candidates, and turn learnings into action.
88 pages, Giff Constable 2014
The Mom Test
How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
by Rob Fitzpatrick
Why read?
Talking to customers is one of the foundational skills of both Customer Development and Lean Startup. We all know we’re supposed to do it, but nobody seems willing to admit that it’s easy to screw up and hard to do right. This book is going to show you how customer conversations go wrong and how you can do better.
136 pages, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013
The UX Book
Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience
by Rex Hartson and Pardha Pyla
Why read?
The UX Book comes with a very broad approach to user experience through its components―usability, usefulness, and emotional impact with special attention to lightweight methods such as rapid UX evaluation techniques and an agile UX development process. It includes real-world stories and contributions from accomplished UX practitioners and a practical guide to best practices and established principles in UX.
968 pages, Morgan Kaufmann 2012
User Research
A Practical Guide to Designing Better Products and Services
by Stephanie Marsh
Why read?
This book shows how to use the vast array of user research methods available. Covering all the key research methods including face-to-face user testing, card sorting, surveys, A/B testing and many more.
288 pages, Kogan Page 2018
Lean UX
Designing Great Products with Agile Teams
by Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden
Why read?
You’ll learn how to drive the design in short, iterative cycles to assess what works best for the business and the user.
208 pages, O’Reilly Media 2016
Sense and Respond
How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously
by Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden
Why read?
This engaging and practical book provides the crucial new operational and management model to help you and your organization win in a world of continuous change.
272 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2017
The Lean Startup
How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
by Eric Ries
Why read?
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
338 pages, Currency 2011
Do you know any great user research and interviewing books for product leaders that we missed? Let us know in the comments. #sharingiscaring
