5 Tips for Conducting User Interviews By Lia Bischoff, Codal Inc
______________________________________________________ By gathering information regarding users feelings, behaviors, motivations, objectives, and routines, UX designers learn how to improve user experiences. They do this via user interviews. User interviews are great at all stages! Before you design as to provide information concerning personas, journey maps, and feature ideas. Or even after a user test in order to provide verbal responses as contexts to your findings. Below are Codal’s, a user experience research services company, five tips for conducting user interviews! 1. Ask the right questions Anyone can ask questions, but asking meaningful questions that elicit informative feedback takes some preparation. Don’t ask “yes or no” questions and avoid vague questions. You want to ask thought provoking questions that require users to provide genuine, and explanatory, responses. For example, “Why or why don’t you like the checkout process?” or “Tell me about your experience using our product.” Also, keep in mind the interview is not a sales pitch. Keep your questions neutral. This is not an opportunity to promote your product. 2. Try to anticipate follow-up questions
While you can’t predict the future, chances are you will have at least some idea as to how your users will respond to your questions. That being said, try to anticipate their answers with follow-up questions in order to keep the interview moving forward and gather even more information. 3. Remember human flaws and limitations User interviews receive self-reported data that reflect feelings and perceptions, both of which are inherently subjective. While we proceed to conduct user interviews seeking out these subjective responses, they are not void of human flaws and limitations. Important flaws and limitations to keep in mind: ● Some people may feel pressure to answer questions a certain way and as a result either omit details or include unnecessary details. ● Human memory is not entirely reliable - take this into account when receiving any and all answers. ● People prone to cognitive biases - this is certainly something to for both the interviewer and interviewee, however answers given in bias can give skewed results research. Caption: image courtesy of Visual Capitalist 4. Topics to cover during the interview
While this list is not exhaustive, nor should you limit your interview to these topics, start here:
● ● ● ●
● Background information - general info about the user, such as age, location, demographic, ethnographic, etc.. General technology use - user’s experience with technology, frequency of using technology, and types of technology being used. Use of the product - determine how your user uses your product. Objectives and motivations - why your user uses your product. Pain points - users are usually pretty aware of their frustrations and where they originate so take advantage of this!
5. Make sure user interviews is what you need There are many different means to address the UX of your product, including but not limited to user interviews. However, oftentimes a user, or usability, test is needed
opposed to user interviews. If you’re needing to know things like whether a design is easy to use or what technically makes a design easy or difficult, then consider a usability test. Caption: Table highlighting some differences between user testing and user interviewing from Nielsen Norman Group. Not sure which test is right for you? Chicago ux design agency, Codal, can help! Your conducted your user interview: now what?
Hopefully your user interview was a success and you acquired plenty of valuable information. Time to start using that data! Maybe the goal of your product is digital transformation in healthcare, maybe your product aim is digital transformation in logistics, or maybe you’re looking for an eCommerce solution but your user interview results require a solution. Contact Codal! Let us apply our user research services to your product and business.