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How to conduct effective user interviews for UX research

User interviews are a popular UX research technique, providing valuable insight into how your users think and feel. Learn about the different types of user interviews and how to conduct your own in this guide.

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User interviews are a popular UX research technique, providing valuable insight into how your users think and feel. Learn about the different types of user interviews and how to conduct your own in this guide. 

User research is fundamental for good UX. It helps you get to know your users and design products that meet their needs and solve their pain-points. 

One of the most popular UX research methods is user interviews. With this technique, you get to hear from your users first-hand, learning about their needs, goals, expectations, and frustrations—anything they think and feel in relation to the problem space.

But when should you conduct user interviews and how do you make sure they yield valuable results?

Follow this guide and you’ll be a user interview pro. We explain:

What are user interviews in UX research?

What are the different types of user interviews, when should you conduct user interviews, what data and insights do you get from user interviews, how to conduct effective user interviews for ux research: a step-by-step guide.

• What happens next? How to analyse your user interview data

First things first: What are user interviews?

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Interviews are one of the most popular UX research methods. They provide valuable insight into how your users think, feel, and talk about a particular topic or scenario—allowing you to paint a rich and detailed picture of their needs and goals. 

interviews take place on a one-to-one basis, with a UX designer or UX researcher asking the user questions and recording their answers. They can last anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour, and they can be done at various stages of a UX design project. 

There are several different types of user interviews. They can be:

• Structured, semi-structured, or unstructured
• Generative, contextual, or continuous
• Remote or in-person

Let’s explore these in more detail.

Structured vs. semi-structured vs. unstructured user interviews

Structured interviews follow a set list of questions in a set order. The questions are usually closed—i.e. there’s a limit to how participants can respond (e.g. “Yes” or “No”). Structured interviews ensure that all research participants get exactly the same questions, and are most appropriate when you already have a good understanding of the topic/area you’re researching. 

Structured interviews also make it easier to compare the data gathered from each interview. However, a disadvantage is that they are rather restrictive; they don’t invite much elaboration or nuance. 

Semi-structured interviews are based on an interview guide rather than a full script, providing some pre-written questions. These tend to be open-ended questions, allowing the user to answer freely. The interviewer will then ask follow-up questions to gain a deeper understanding of the user’s answers. Semi-structured interviews are great for eliciting rich user insights—but, without a set script of questions, there’s a high risk of researcher bias (for example, asking questions that unintentionally lead the participant in a certain direction). 

Unstructured user interviews are completely unscripted. It’s up to the interviewer to come up with questions on the spot, based on the user’s previous answers. These are some of the trickiest types of user interviews—you’re under pressure to think fast while avoiding questions that might bias the user’s answer. Still, if done well, unstructured interviews are great if you have very little knowledge or data about the domain and want to explore it openly. 

Generative vs. contextual vs. continuous user interviews

Generative user interviews are ideal for early-stage exploration and discovery. They help you to uncover what you don’t know—in other words, what insights are you missing? What user problem should you be trying to solve? Which areas and topics can you identify for further user research? Generative interviews are usually unstructured or semi-structured. 

Contextual user interviews take place in a specific context—while the user is carrying out a certain task, for example. This allows you to not only observe the user’s actions/behaviour first-hand, but also to ask questions and learn more about why the user takes certain actions and how they feel in the process. Contextual interviews tend to be semi-structured. 

Continuous user interviews are conducted as part of continuous UX research. While traditional user research is done within the scope of a specific project, continuous UX research is ongoing, conducted at regular interviews (e.g. weekly or monthly) with the goal of continuous product improvement. Continuous interviews are like regular check-ins with your users, giving you ongoing insight into their needs, goals, and pain-points. 

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Remote vs. in-person user interviews

A final distinction to make is between remote and in-person interviews. 

In-person user interviews take place with the user and researcher in the same room. A big advantage of in-person interviews is that you’re privy to the user’s body language—an additional insight into how they feel. 

Remote user interviews take place via video call. Like any kind of remote work, they’re more flexible and may be more accessible for research participants as they don’t require any travel. 

User interviews provide value at various stages of a design project. You can use them for:

• Discovery and ideation —when you want to learn more about your target users and the problems they need you to solve.
• UX testing and product improvement —when you want to get user feedback on an existing design concept or solution.
• Continuous UX research —you can run regular interviews as part of a continuous UX research framework. 

Let’s take a closer look. 

User interviews for discovery and ideation

User interviews can be useful right at the beginning of a UX project, when you don’t know much (or anything) about the domain and don’t yet have a design direction. At this stage, everything is pretty open and your user interviews will be exploratory. 

Conducting user interviews early in the process will help you to answer questions such as “Who are our target users?”, “What problems do they need us to solve?” and “What are their goals and expectations in relation to the problem space?”

Here you’ll be focusing on generative user interviews (i.e. finding out what you don’t know), and they’ll likely be unstructured or semi-structured.

User interviews as part of UX testing and product improvement

User interviews also come in handy when you have an idea or concept you want to evaluate, or even a working product you want to test. 

At this stage, you might present the user with a prototype and ask them questions about it. If you’re further along in the design process, you can run user interviews as an add-on to UX testing —having the user interact with a working prototype (or the product itself) and asking them questions at the same time. These are the contextual interviews we described earlier. 

Conducting user interviews at this stage will help you gain insight into how your users feel about a concept/product/experience and to identify pain-points or usability issues within the existing design. 

User interviews as part of continuous UX research

User interviews are also valuable as part of a continuous UX research framework. Here, there is no project-specific goal—rather, you’re interviewing users regularly to gain ongoing user insights. This enables you to maintain a user-centric design process and to evolve your product continuously as you learn more about your users. 

You can learn more about the importance of continuous UX research here .

User interviews allow you to hear from the user, in their own words, how they think and feel about a particular problem space/experience/task. This provides rich insights into their thoughts, beliefs, experiences, problems, goals, desires, motivations, and expectations, as well as the rationale or thought process behind certain actions. 

As such, user interviews generate qualitative data . That is, data which tells you about a person’s thoughts, feelings, and subjective experiences. It’s the opposite of quantitative data which is objective, numerical, and measurable. You can learn more about the difference between quantitative and qualitative user research data here .

Note that user interviews generate self-reported data . Self-reported data is based on what the user chooses to share with you (you’re not observing it; rather, you’re hearing it from the user). It’s how they report to be feeling or thinking. 

If you conduct contextual user interviews, you’ll gather a mixture of observational data (based on what you observe the user doing) and self-reported data. 

After conducting user interviews, you’ll end up with lots of data in the form of interview transcripts, audio or video recordings, and your own notes. We’ll look at how to analyse your user interview data in the final section of this guide. 

First, though, here’s a step-by-step plan you can follow to conduct effective user interviews. 

Ready to conduct your own user interviews? Follow our step-by-step guide to get started.

• Determine what type of user interviews you’ll conduct
• Write your user interview script (or guide)
• Set up the necessary tools
• Recruit your interview participants
• Perfect your interview technique

Let’s walk through our plan step by step. 

1. Determine what type of user interviews you’ll conduct

Earlier in this guide, we outlined the different types of user interviews: Structured, semi-structured, and unstructured; generative, contextual, and continuous; and remote and in-person. 

The first step is to determine what format your user interviews will take. This depends on:

• What stage you’re at in the project/process
• What your research goals are

If you’re at the very early stages of a design project, you’ll likely want to keep your user interviews open and exploratory—opting for unstructured or semi-structured interviews. 

Perhaps you’ve already got a design underway and want to interview your users as they interact with it. In that case, structured or semi-structured contextual interviews may work best. 

Consider what you want to learn from your user interviews and go from there. 

2. Write your user interview script (or guide)

How you approach this step will depend on whether you’re conducting structured, semi-structured, or unstructured user interviews.

For structured interviews, you’ll need to write a full interview script—paying attention to the order of the questions. The script should also incorporate follow-up questions; you won’t have the freedom to improvise or ask additional questions outside of your script, so make sure you’re covering all possible ground. 

For semi-structured interviews, you’ll write an interview guide rather than a rigid script. Come up with a set list of questions you definitely want to ask and use these—and your users’ answers—as a springboard for follow-up questions during the interview itself. 

For unstructured user interviews, you can go in without a script. However, it’s useful to at least brainstorm some questions you might ask to get the interview started. 

Regardless of whether you’re conducting structured, semi-structured, or unstructured interviews, it’s essential that your questions are:

• Open-ended . These are questions that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. They require more elaboration from the user, providing you with much more insightful answers. An example of an open question could be “Can you tell me about your experience of using mobile apps to book train tickets?” versus a closed question such as “Have you ever used a mobile app to book train tickets?”
• Unbiased and non-leading . You want to be very careful about how you word your questions. It’s important that you don’t unintentionally lead the user or bias their answer in any way. For example, if you ask “How often do you practise app-based meditation?”, you’re assuming that the user practises meditation at all. A better question would be “What are your thoughts on app-based meditation?” 

It’s worth having someone else check your questions before you use them in a user interview. This will help you to remove any unintentionally biased or leading questions which may compromise the quality of your research data. 

3. Recruit your interview participants

Your user interviews should involve people who represent your target users. This might be existing customers and/or representative users who fit the persona you would be designing for. 

Some common methods for recruiting user research participants include:

• Posting on social media
• Working with a dedicated agency or platform which will connect you with suitable participants
• Recruiting from your own customer or user database

The good thing about user interviews is that you don’t need loads of participants to gather valuable data. Focus on quality over quantity, recruiting between five and ten interviewees who closely match your target group. 

4. Set up the necessary tools

Now for the practical matter of getting your user interviews underway. If you’re conducting in-person user interviews, you’ll need to choose an appropriate setting—ideally somewhere quiet and neutral where the user will feel relaxed. 

For remote user interviews, you’ll need to set up the necessary software, such as Zoom , dscout , or Lookback . Consult this guide for more UX research tools . 

You’ll also need to consider how you’re going to record the user’s answers. Will you use good old fashioned pen and paper, a simple note-taking app, or a recording and transcription software? 

Make a list of all the tools you’ll need for a seamless user interview and get everything set up in advance. 

5. Perfect your interview technique

As the interviewer, you have an important role to play in ensuring the success of your user interviews. So what makes a good interviewer? Here are some tips to help you perfect your interview technique:

• Practise active listening . Show the user that you’re listening to them; maintain eye contact (try not to be too distracted with taking notes), let them speak without rushing, and don’t give any verbal or non-verbal cues that you’re judging their responses.
• Get comfortable with silence . In everyday conversations, it can be tempting to fill silences. But, in an interview situation, it’s important to lean into the power of the pause. Let the user think and speak when they’re ready—this is usually when you elicit the most interesting insights.
• Speak the user’s language . Communication is everything in user interviews. Don’t alienate the user by speaking “UX speak”—they may not be familiar with industry-specific terms, and this can add unnecessary friction to the experience. Keep it simple, conversational, and accessible.

Ultimately, the key is to put your users at ease and create a space where they can talk openly and honestly. Perfect your interview technique and you’ll find it much easier to build a rapport with your research participants and uncover valuable, candid insights. 

What happens next? How to analyse your user interview data 

You’ve conducted your user interviews. Now you’re left with lots of unstructured, unorganised qualitative data—i.e. reams of notes. So how do you turn all those interview answers into useful, actionable insights? 

The most common technique for analysing qualitative data is thematic analysis . This is where you read through all the data you’ve gathered (in this case, your notes and transcripts) and use ‘codes’ to denote different patterns that emerge across the dataset. 

You’ll then ‘code’ different excerpts within your interview notes and transcripts, eventually sorting the coded data into a group of overarching themes. 

At this stage, you can create an affinity diagram —writing all relevant findings and data points onto Post-it notes and ‘mapping’ them into topic clusters on a board. This is a great technique for physically working through your data and creating a visualisation of your themes, allowing you to step back and spot important patterns. 

With your research data organised and categorised, you can review your findings in relation to your original research objectives. What do the themes and patterns tell you? What actions can you take from your findings? What gaps still need to be filled with further UX research?

As a final step, you might write up a UX research report and present your findings to relevant stakeholders. 

Learn more about UX research

We hope you now have a clear understanding of what user interviews are, why they’re such a valuable UX research method, and how to conduct your own user interviews. If you’d like to learn more about user research, continue with these guides:

• A complete introduction to card sorting: What is it and how do you do it?
• What are UX personas and what are they used for?
• What’s the future of UX research? An interview with Mitchell Wakefield, User Researcher at NHS Digital
• user interviews
• ux research

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What is UX Research: The Ultimate Guide for UX Researchers

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The UX researcher’s toolkit: 11 UX research methods and when to use them

After defining your objectives and planning your research framework, it’s time to choose the research technique that will best serve your project's goals and yield the right insights. While user research is often treated as an afterthought, it should inform every design decision. In this chapter, we walk you through the most common research methods and help you choose the right one for you.

What are UX research methods?

A UX research method is a way of generating insights about your users, their behavior, motivations, and needs.

These methods help:

• Learn about user behavior and attitudes
• Identify key pain points and challenges in the user interface
• Develop user personas to identify user needs and drive solutions
• Test user interface designs to see what works and what doesn’t

You can use research methodologies like user interviews, surveys, focus groups, card sorting, usability testing to identify user challenges and turn them into opportunities to improve the user experience.

More of a visual learner? Check out this video for a speedy rundown. If you’re ready to get stuck in, jump straight to our full breakdown .

The most common types of user research

First, let’s talk about the types of UX research. Every individual research method falls under these types, which reflect different goals and objectives for conducting research.

Here’s a quick overview:

Qualitative vs. quantitative

All research methods are either quantitative or qualitative . Qualitative research focuses on capturing subjective insights into users' experiences. It aims to understand the underlying reasons, motivations, and behaviors of individuals.

Quantitative research, on the other hand, involves collecting and analyzing numerical data to identify patterns, trends, and significance. It aims to quantify user behaviors, preferences, and attitudes, allowing for generalizations and statistical insights.

Qualitative research also typically involves a smaller sample size than quantitative research. Nielsen Norman Group recommends 40 participants—see our full rundown of how many user testers you need for different research methods .

Attitudinal vs. behavioral

Attitudinal research is about understanding users' attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs. It delves into the 'why' behind user decisions and actions. It often involves surveys or interviews where users are asked about their feelings, preferences, or perceptions towards a product or service. It's subjective in nature, aiming to capture people's emotions and opinions.

Behavioral research is about what users do rather than what they say they do or would do. This kind of research is often based on observation methods like usability testing, eye-tracking, or heat maps to understand user behavior.

Generative vs. evaluative

Generative research is all about generating new ideas, concepts, and insights to fuel the design process. You might run brainstorming sessions with groups of users, card sorting, and co-design sessions to inspire creativity and guide the development of user-centered solutions.

On the other hand, evaluative research focuses on assessing the usability, effectiveness, and overall quality of existing designs or prototypes. Once you’ve developed a prototype of your product, it's time to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. You can compare different versions of a product design or feature through A/B testing—ensuring your UX design meets user needs and expectations.

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11 Best UX research methods and when to use them

There are various UX research techniques—each method serves a specific purpose and can provide unique insights into user behaviors and preferences. In this section, we’ll highlight the most common research techniques you need to know.

Read on for an at-a-glance table, and full breakdown of each method.

1. User interviews

Tl;dr: user interviews.

Directly ask users about their experiences with a product to understand their thoughts, feelings, and problems

✅ Provides detailed insights that survey may miss ❌ May not represent the wider user base; depends on user’s memory and honesty

User interviews are a qualitative research method that involves having open-ended and guided discussions with users to gather in-depth insights about their experiences, needs, motivations, and behaviors.

Typically, you would ask a few questions on a specific topic during a user interview and analyze participants' answers. The results you get will depend on how well you form and ask questions, as well as follow up on participants’ answers.

“As a researcher, it's our responsibility to drive the user to their actual problems,” says Yuliya Martinavichene , User Experience Researcher at Zinio. She adds, “The narration of incidents can help you analyze a lot of hidden details with regard to user behavior.”

That’s why you should:

• Start with a wide context : Make sure that your questions don’t start with your product
• Ask questions: Always ask questions that focus on the tasks that users are trying to complete
• Invest in analysis : Get transcripts done and share the findings with your team

Tanya Nativ , Design Researcher at Sketch recommends defining the goals and assumptions internally. “Our beliefs about our users’ behavior really help to structure good questions and get to the root of the problem and its solution,” she explains.

It's easy to be misunderstood if you don't have experience writing interview questions. You can get someone to review them for you or use our Question Bank of 350+ research questions .

When to conduct user interviews

This method is typically used at the start and end of your project. At the start of a project, you can establish a strong understanding of your target users, their perspectives, and the context in which they’ll interact with your product. By the end of your project, new user interviews—often with a different set of individuals—offer a litmus test for your product's usability and appeal, providing firsthand accounts of experiences, perceived strengths, and potential areas for refinement.

2. Field studies

Tl;dr: field studies.

Observe users in their natural environment to inform design decisions with real-world context

✅ Provides contextual insights into user behavior in real-world situations ✅ Helps identify external factors and conditions that influence user experience ❌ Can be time-consuming and resource-intensive to conduct ❌ Participants may behave differently when they know they are being observed (Hawthorne effect)

Field studies—also known as ethnographic research—are research activities that take place in the user’s environment rather than in your lab or office. They’re a great method for uncovering context, unknown motivations, or constraints that affect the user experience.

An advantage of field studies is observing people in their natural environment, giving you a glimpse at the context in which your product is used. It’s useful to understand the context in which users complete tasks, learn about their needs, and collect in-depth user stories.

When to conduct field studies

This method can be used at all stages of your project—two key times you may want to conduct field studies are:

• As part of the discovery and exploration stage to define direction and understand the context around when and how users interact with the product
• During usability testing, once you have a prototype, to evaluate the effectiveness of the solution or validate design assumptions in real-world contexts

3. Focus groups

Tl;dr: focus groups.

Gather qualitative data from a group of users discussing their experiences and opinions about a product

✅ Allows for diverse perspectives to be shared and discussed ❌ Group dynamics may influence individual opinions

A focus group is a qualitative research method that includes the study of a group of people, their beliefs, and opinions. It’s typically used for market research or gathering feedback on products and messaging.

Focus groups can help you better grasp:

• How users perceive your product
• What users believe are a product’s most important features
• What problems do users experience with the product

As with any qualitative research method, the quality of the data collected through focus groups is only as robust as the preparation. So, it’s important to prepare a UX research plan you can refer to during the discussion.

Here’s some things to consider:

• Write a script to guide the conversation
• Ask clear, open-ended questions focused on the topics you’re trying to learn about
• Include around five to ten participants to keep the sessions focused and organized

When to conduct focus groups

It’s easier to use this research technique when you're still formulating your concept, product, or service—to explore user preferences, gather initial reactions, and generate ideas. This is because, in the early stages, you have flexibility and can make significant changes without incurring high costs.

Another way some researchers employ focus groups is post-launch to gather feedback and identify potential improvements. However, you can also use other methods here which may be more effective for identifying usability issues. For example, a platform like Maze can provide detailed, actionable data about how users interact with your product. These quantitative results are a great accompaniment to the qualitative data gathered from your focus group.

4. Diary studies

Tl;dr: diary studies.

Get deep insights into user thoughts and feelings by having them keep a product-related diary over a set period of time, typically a couple of weeks

✅ Gives you a peak into how users interact with your product in their day-to-day ❌ Depends on how motivated and dedicated the users are

Diary studies involve asking users to track their usage and thoughts on your product by keeping logs or diaries, taking photos, explaining their activities, and highlighting things that stood out to them.

“Diary studies are one of the few ways you can get a peek into how users interact with our product in a real-world scenario,” says Tanya.

A diary study helps you tell the story of how products and services fit into people’s daily lives, and the touch-points and channels they choose to complete their tasks.

There’s several key questions to consider before conducting diary research, from what kind of diary you want—freeform or structured, and digital or paper—to how often you want participants to log their thoughts.

• Open, ‘freeform’ diary: Users have more freedom to record what and when they like, but can also lead to missed opportunities to capture data users might overlook
• Closed, ‘structured; diary: Users follow a stricter entry-logging process and answer pre-set questions

Remember to determine the trigger: a signal that lets the participants know when they should log their feedback. Tanya breaks these triggers down into the following:

• Interval-contingent trigger : Participants fill out the diary at specific intervals such as one entry per day, or one entry per week
• Signal-contingent trigger : You tell the participant when to make an entry and how you would prefer them to communicate it to you as well as your preferred type of communication
• Event-contingent trigger : The participant makes an entry whenever a defined event occurs

When to conduct diary studies

Diary studies are often valuable when you need to deeply understand users' behaviors, routines, and pain points in real-life contexts. This could be when you're:

• Conceptualizing a new product or feature: Gain insights into user habits, needs, and frustrations to inspire your design
• Trying to enhance an existing product: Identify areas where users are having difficulties or where there are opportunities for better user engagement

TL;DR: Surveys

Collect quantitative data from a large sample of users about their experiences, preferences, and satisfaction with a product

✅ Provides a broad overview of user opinions and trends ❌ May lack in-depth insights and context behind user responses

Although surveys are primarily used for quantitative research, they can also provided qualitative data, depending on whether you use closed or open-ended questions:

• Closed-ended questions come with a predefined set of answers to choose from using formats like rating scales, rankings, or multiple choice. This results in quantitative data.
• Open-ended question s are typically open-text questions where test participants give their responses in a free-form style. This results in qualitative data.

Matthieu Dixte , Product Researcher at Maze, explains the benefit of surveys: “With open-ended questions, researchers get insight into respondents' opinions, experiences, and explanations in their own words. This helps explore nuances that quantitative data alone may not capture.”

So, how do you make sure you’re asking the right survey questions? Gregg Bernstein , UX Researcher at Signal, says that when planning online surveys, it’s best to avoid questions that begin with “How likely are you to…?” Instead, Gregg says asking questions that start with “Have you ever… ?” will prompt users to give more specific and measurable answers.

Make sure your questions:

• Are easy to understand
• Don't guide participants towards a particular answer
• Include both closed-ended and open-ended questions
• Respect users and their privacy
• Are consistent in terms of format

To learn more about survey design, check out this guide .

When to conduct surveys

While surveys can be used at all stages of project development, and are ideal for continuous product discovery , the specific timing and purpose may vary depending on the research goals. For example, you can run surveys at:

• Conceptualization phase to gather preliminary data, and identify patterns, trends, or potential user segments
• Post-launch or during iterative design cycles to gather feedback on user satisfaction, feature usage, or suggestions for improvements

6. Card sorting

Tl;dr: card sorting.

Understand how users categorize and prioritize information within a product or service to structure your information in line with user expectations

✅ Helps create intuitive information architecture and navigation ❌ May not accurately reflect real-world user behavior and decision-making

Card sorting is an important step in creating an intuitive information architecture (IA) and user experience. It’s also a great technique to generate ideas, naming conventions, or simply see how users understand topics.

In this UX research method, participants are presented with cards featuring different topics or information, and tasked with grouping the cards into categories that make sense to them.

There are three types of card sorting:

• Open card sorting: Participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and name those categories, thus generating new ideas and names
• Hybrid card sorting: Participants can sort cards into predefined categories, but also have the option to create their own categories
• Closed card sorting: Participants are given predefined categories and asked to sort the items into the available groups

Card sorting type comparison table

You can run a card sorting session using physical index cards or digitally with a UX research tool like Maze to simulate the drag-and-drop activity of dividing cards into groups. Running digital card sorting is ideal for any type of card sort, and moderated or unmoderated sessions .

Read more about card sorting and learn how to run a card sorting session here .

When to conduct card sorting

Card sorting isn’t limited to a single stage of design or development—it can be employed anytime you need to explore how users categorize or perceive information. For example, you may want to use card sorting if you need to:

• Understand how users perceive ideas
• Evaluate and prioritize potential solutions
• Generate name ideas and understand naming conventions
• Learn how users expect navigation to work
• Decide how to group content on a new or existing site
• Restructure information architecture

7. Tree testing

Tl;dr: tree testing.

Evaluate the findability of existing information within a product's hierarchical structure or navigation

✅ Identifies potential issues in the information architecture ❌ Focuses on navigation structure, not visual design or content

During tree testing a text-only version of the site is given to your participants, who are asked to complete a series of tasks requiring them to locate items on the app or website.

The data collected from a tree test helps you understand where users intuitively navigate first, and is an effective way to assess the findability, labeling, and information architecture of a product.

We recommend keeping these sessions short, ranging from 15 to 20 minutes, and asking participants to complete no more than ten tasks. This helps ensure participants remain focused and engaged, leading to more reliable and accurate data, and avoiding fatigue.

If you’re using a platform like Maze to run remote testing, you can easily recruit participants based on various demographic filters, including industry and country. This way, you can uncover a broader range of user preferences, ensuring a more comprehensive understanding of your target audience.

To learn more about tree testing, check out this chapter .

When to conduct tree testing

Tree testing is often done at an early stage in the design or redesign process. That’s because it’s more cost-effective to address errors at the start of a project—rather than making changes later in the development process or after launch.

However, it can be helpful to employ tree testing as a method when adding new features, particularly alongside card sorting.

While tree testing and card sorting can both help you with categorizing the content on a website, it’s important to note that they each approach this from a different angle and are used at different stages during the research process. Ideally, you should use the two in tandem: card sorting is recommended when defining and testing a new website architecture, while tree testing is meant to help you test how the navigation performs with users.

8. Usability testing

Tl;dr: usability testing.

Observe users completing specific tasks with a product to identify usability issues and potential improvements

✅ Provides direct insights into user behavior and reveals pain points ❌ Conducted in a controlled environment, may not fully represent real-world usage

Usability testing evaluates your product with people by getting them to complete tasks while you observe and note their interactions (either during or after the test). The goal of conducting usability testing is to understand if your design is intuitive and easy to use. A sign of success is if users can easily accomplish their goals and complete tasks with your product.

There are various usability testing methods that you can use, such as moderated vs. unmoderated or qualitative vs. quantitative —and selecting the right one depends on your research goals, resources, and timeline.

Usability testing is usually performed with functional mid or hi-fi prototypes . If you have a Figma, InVision, Sketch, or prototype ready, you can import it into a platform like Maze and start testing your design with users immediately.

The tasks you create for usability tests should be:

• Realistic, and describe a scenario
• Actionable, and use action verbs (create, sign up, buy, etc)

Be mindful of using leading words such as ‘click here’ or ‘go to that page’ in your tasks. These instructions bias the results by helping users complete their tasks—something that doesn’t happen in real life.

✨ Product tip

With Maze, you can test your prototype and live website with real users to filter out cognitive biases, and gather actionable insights that fuel product decisions.

When to conduct usability testing

To inform your design decisions, you should do usability testing early and often in the process . Here are some guidelines to help you decide when to do usability testing:

• Before you start designing
• Once you have a wireframe or prototype
• Prior to the launch of the product
• At regular intervals after launch

To learn more about usability testing, check out our complete guide to usability testing .

9. Five-second testing

Tl;dr: five-second testing.

Gauge users' first impressions and understanding of a design or layout

✅ Provides insights into the instant clarity and effectiveness of visual communication ❌ Limited to first impressions, does not assess full user experience or interaction

In five-second testing , participants are (unsurprisingly) given five seconds to view an image like a design or web page, and then they’re asked questions about the design to gauge their first impressions.

Why five seconds? According to data , 55% of visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a website, so it;s essential to grab someone’s attention in the first few seconds of their visit. With a five-second test, you can quickly determine what information users perceive and their impressions during the first five seconds of viewing a design.

Product tip 💡

And if you’re using Maze, you can simply upload an image of the screen you want to test, or browse your prototype and select a screen. Plus, you can star individual comments and automatically add them to your report to share with stakeholders.

When to conduct five-second testing

Five-second testing is typically conducted in the early stages of the design process, specifically during initial concept testing or prototype development. This way, you can evaluate your design's initial impact and make early refinements or adjustments to ensure its effectiveness, before putting design to development.

To learn more, check out our chapter on five-second testing .

10. A/B testing

Tl;dr: a/b testing.

Compare two versions of a design or feature to determine which performs better based on user engagement

✅ Provides data-driven insights to guide design decisions and optimize user experience ❌ Requires a large sample size and may not account for long-term effects or complex interactions

A/B testing , also known as split testing, compares two or more versions of a webpage, interface, or feature to determine which performs better regarding engagement, conversions, or other predefined metrics.

It involves randomly dividing users into different groups and giving each group a different version of the design element being tested. For example, let's say the primary call-to-action on the page is a button that says ‘buy now’.

You're considering making changes to its design to see if it can lead to higher conversions, so you create two versions:

• Version A : The original design with the ‘buy now’ button positioned below the product description—shown to group A
• Version B : A variation with the ‘buy now’ button now prominently displayed above the product description—shown to group B

Over a planned period, you measure metrics like click-through rates, add-to-cart rates, and actual purchases to assess the performance of each variation. You find that Group B had significantly higher click-through and conversion rates than Group A. This indicates that showing the button above the product description drove higher user engagement and conversions.

Check out our A/B testing guide for more in-depth examples and guidance on how to run these tests.

When to conduct A/B testing

A/B testing can be used at all stages of the design and development process—whenever you want to collect direct, quantitative data and confirm a suspicion, or settle a design debate. This iterative testing approach allows you to continually improve your website's performance and user experience based on data-driven insights.

11. Concept testing

Tl;dr: concept testing.

Evaluate users' reception and understanding of a new product, feature, or design idea before moving on to development

✅ Helps validate and refine concepts based on user feedback ❌ Relies on users' perception and imagination, may not reflect actual use

Concept testing is a type of research that evaluates the feasibility, appeal, and potential success of a new product before you build it. It centers the user in the ideation process, using UX research methods like A/B testing, surveys, and customer interviews.

There’s no one way to run a concept test—you can opt for concept testing surveys, interviews, focus groups, or any other method that gets qualitative data on your concept.

*Dive into our complete guide to concept testing for more tips and tricks on getting started. *

When to conduct concept testing

Concept testing helps gauge your audience’s interest, understanding, and likelihood-to-purchase, before committing time and resources to a concept. However, it can also be useful further down the product development line—such as when defining marketing messaging or just before launching.

Which is the best UX research type?

The best research type varies depending on your project; what your objectives are, and what stage you’re in. Ultimately, the ideal type of research is one which provides the insights required, using the available resources.

For example, if you're at the early ideation or product discovery stage, generative research methods can help you generate new ideas, understand user needs, and explore possibilities. As you move to the design and development phase, evaluative research methods and quantitative data become crucial.

Discover the UX research trends shaping the future of the industry and why the best results come from a combination of different research methods.

How to choose the right user experience research method

In an ideal world, a combination of all the insights you gain from multiple types of user research methods would guide every design decision. In practice, this can be hard to execute due to resources.

Sometimes the right methodology is the one you can get buy-in, budget, and time for.

Gregg Bernstein , UX Researcher at Signal

UX research tools can help streamline the research process, making regular testing and application of diverse methods more accessible—so you always keep the user at the center of your design process. Some other key tips to remember when choosing your method are:

Define the goals and problems

A good way to inform your choice of user experience research method is to start by considering your goals. You might want to browse UX research templates or read about examples of research.

Michael Margolis , UX Research Partner at Google Ventures, recommends answering questions like:

• “What do your users need?”
• “What are your users struggling with?”
• “How can you help your users?”

Understand the design process stage

If your team is very early in product development, generative research —like field studies—make sense. If you need to test design mockups or a prototype, evaluative research methods—such as usability testing—will work best.

This is something they’re big on at Sketch, as we heard from Design Researcher, Tanya Nativ. She says, “In the discovery phase, we focus on user interviews and contextual inquiries. The testing phase is more about dogfooding, concept testing, and usability testing. Once a feature has been launched, it’s about ongoing listening.”

Consider the type of insights required

If you're looking for rich, qualitative data that delves into user behaviors, motivations, and emotions, then methods like user interviews or field studies are ideal. They’ll help you uncover the ‘why’ behind user actions.

On the other hand, if you need to gather quantitative data to measure user satisfaction or compare different design variations, methods like surveys or A/B testing are more suitable. These methods will help you get hard numbers and concrete data on preferences and behavior.

*Discover the UX research trends shaping the future of the industry and why the best results come from a combination of different research methods. *

Build a deeper understanding of your users with UX research

Think of UX research methods as building blocks that work together to create a well-rounded understanding of your users. Each method brings its own unique strengths, whether it's human empathy from user interviews or the vast data from surveys.

But it's not just about choosing the right UX research methods; the research platform you use is equally important. You need a platform that empowers your team to collect data, analyze, and collaborate seamlessly.

Simplifying product research is simple with Maze. From tree testing to card sorting, prototype testing to user interview analysis—Maze makes getting actionable insights easy, whatever method you opt for.

Meanwhile, if you want to know more about testing methods, head on to the next chapter all about tree testing .

Get valuable insights from real users

Conduct impactful UX research with Maze and improve your product experience and customer satisfaction.

Frequently asked questions

How do you choose the right UX research method?

Choosing the right research method depends on your goals. Some key things to consider are:

• The feature/product you’re testing
• The type of data you’re looking for
• The design stage
• The time and resources you have available

What is the best UX research method?

The best research method is the one you have the time, resources, and budget for that meets your specific needs and goals. Most research tools, like Maze, will accommodate a variety of UX research and testing techniques.

When to use which user experience research method?

Selecting which user research method to use—if budget and resources aren’t a factor—depends on your goals. UX research methods provide different types of data:

• Qualitative vs quantitative
• Attitudinal vs behavioral
• Generative vs evaluative

Identify your goals, then choose a research method that gathers the user data you need.

What results can I expect from UX research?

Here are some of the key results you can expect from actioning the insights uncovered during UX research:

• Improved user satisfaction
• Increased usability
• Better product fit
• Informed design decisions
• Reduced development costs
• Higher conversion rates
• Increased customer loyalty and retention

Tree Testing: Your Guide to Improve Navigation and UX

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

User interviews 101.

September 17, 2023 2023-09-17

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A user interview is a popular UX research method often used in the discovery phase .

User interview: A research method where the interviewer asks participants questions about a topic, listens to their responses, and follows up with further questions to learn more.

The term “user interview” is unique to the UX field. In other areas, like market research or social science, the same method is called an in-depth interview, a semi-structured interview, or a qualitative interview.

In This Article:

Why conduct user interviews, user interviews vs. usability tests, how to do a user interview, can interviews be used with other methods, limitations of interviews.

When performed well, user interviews provide in-depth insight into who your users are, their lives, experiences, and challenges . Learning these things helps teams identify solutions to make users’ lives easier. As a result, user interviews are an excellent tool to use in discovery.

Here are some of the many things you can learn by interviewing your users:

• What users’ experiences were like, what was memorable, and why
• Users’ pain points during an experience
• How users think or feel about a topic, event, or experience
• What users care about
• Users’ mental models
• Users’ motivations, aspirations, and desires

User interviews help teams build empathy for their users . When teams watch interviews, they can put themselves in their users’ shoes.

Data gathered from user interviews can be used to construct various UX artifacts, including

• User-need statements
• Empathy maps
• Customer-journey maps

Interviews are versatile; they can be used to learn about human experiences or about a customer's experience with one of your existing products. For example, imagine you are working on an app used to track calorie intake. You could interview people about their experiences using the app or about their journey to become healthier (or both).

User Interviews are often confused with usability tests . While they sound similar and are both typically one on one, these two methods are very different and should be used for different purposes.

1. Identify What You’d Like to Learn

Think of an interview as a research study, not a sales session or an informal conversation. Like any research study, an interview should have research goals (or research questions). Goals that are too broad (like learning about users ) can result in interviews that fail to produce useful or actionable insights. Examples of reasonable research goals include:

• What causes customers to consider and try our product?
• What are the highs and lows of their experience?
• How much knowledge of the process do users have?
• What makes users abandon the product?

A concise, concrete set of goals that relate to your target users’ specific behaviors or attitudes can help you gather helpful and actionable insights. These goals will influence the questions you’ll ask in your interviews.

2. Prepare a Guide

An interview guide is used to direct the conversation and help you answer your research goals. An interview guide should contain a few well-designed, open-ended questions that get participants talking and sharing their experiences.

Examples of good open-ended questions include:

• Walk me through a typical day for you.
• Tell me about the last time you [did something].
• Tell me about a time when you [had a particular experience].

Jog the memory by asking about specific events rather than about general processes. Remembering a particular incident will nudge the user’s memory and enable them to give you meaningful details.

An interview will also contain followup questions to gather more-detailed information . When constructing the guide, these questions are often nested underneath the main questions. Construct followup questions based on your research goals. Anticipating different responses can help you identify what followup questions to ask. Examples include:

• When did this happen?
• How long did it take you?
• Has this happened to you before?
• How did you feel during this experience?

An interview guide can be used flexibly : interviewers don’t need to move through questions linearly. They can skip questions, spend longer on some questions, or ask questions not in the guide. (See our interview-guide article for an example guide .)

3. Pilot Your Guide

Even the best guide may need to be tweaked after the first interview. Piloting allows you to identify what tweaks are needed before running all your interviews. You can pilot your guide with a friend or colleague if the interview topic isn’t too specialized. Or, you can recruit a target user (or two).

Piloting helps you learn:

• Whether any questions were misunderstood or caused confusion
• If there are questions that should be added to the guide
• If any questions should be removed because they aren’t likely to provide helpful information
• Whether the order of the questions felt natural

Since interviews are a qualitative research method, it’s okay to continue making minor tweaks to your guide as you complete all your interviews. However, avoid changing your research goals throughout the study. It may become difficult to achieve your research goals without collecting enough relevant data.

4. Start Easy

Some participants can feel nervous at the beginning of the interview, especially if they’re not sure what to expect. Start by talking through the purpose of the interview, what kinds of questions will be asked, and how the information will be used. Slow down your pace of speech. Talking slowly has a calming effect and indicates that you are not anxious and have time to listen.

Start with questions that are easy to answer, such as Tell me a bit about yourself or What do you like to do in your spare time? These questions are easy to answer and can get participants comfortable talking. Avoid asking questions likely to be interpreted as personal or judgmental, such as What was the last book you read? This question assumes the user read a book recently; if they didn’t, they might feel stupid.

5. Build Rapport

People are more likely to remember, talk, and let their guard down if they feel relaxed and trust the interviewer and the process. Keep in mind that there’s a big difference between rapport and friendship . The user does not have to like you, think you’re funny, or want to invite you out for a cup of coffee in order to trust you enough to be interviewed.

Build rapport by showing you’re listening and by asking related questions. You can show you’re listening by using verbal and nonverbal cues. Verbal cues include:

• Neutral acknowledging like, I understand, okay, I see
• Making noises like mmmh
• Echoing what the participant has said
• Adjusting the speed, volume, and intonation of your questions

Nonverbal cues include:

• Frequent eye contact
• Raising eyebrows occasionally
• Smiling when the participant smiles (also known as mirroring)

Avoid interrupting or rushing participants as these behaviors will harm your ability to build rapport.

6. Follow Up and Probe

Ask your prepared followup questions if the participant did not cover them when sharing their experiences. Additionally, ask further questions that probe into your participant’s responses. These questions help you to uncover those important motivations, mental models, perceptions, and attitudes.

Probing questions include:

• Tell me more about that.
• Can you expand on that?
• What do you think about that?
• How do you feel about that?
• Why is that important to you?

Since you won’t know when you might use them, probing questions are not usually prepared in advance. However, if you know you might forget to use them, write them at the top of your guide or on an index card.

Yes. You can mix interviews with other methods, such as:

• With a usability test . You might want to learn about the participant before giving them tasks on a design. Your session might begin with a short interview before transitioning to the test. When user tests and interviews are combined, sessions are usually longer (for example, 90 minutes rather than 60 minutes). If you’re combining these methods, the questions you ask in the interview shouldn’t prime users to pay more attention to certain things in the design.
• With a field study or some kind of observational study. You could perform an interview before or after observing a study participant work on their tasks. An interview before an observational study can give you context into what you will observe. An interview after a field study allows you to follow up on interesting things you observed.
• With a diary study . In longer diary studies, it may be beneficial to have an initial interview before the logging period to learn about the participant and prepare them for the diary study. After the logging period ends, a wrapup interview is often conducted to learn more about the participant’s diary entries.

Since interviews are an attitudinal method, they collect reported behaviors (rather than observed behavior). Some limitations of self-reported data include:

• Poor or faulty recollection : Human memory is flawed, so people don’t recall events fully. If the event in question occurred in the distant past, your participants might not recall it accurately.
• Missing details : Participants don’t know precisely what is relevant for the interviewer, so sometimes leave out important details.
• Social-desirability bias : Some people are very conscious of how they’re perceived and may withhold information or may want to present themselves and their behaviors in a certain light.

If we want to know what users actually do, we need to observe them or collect data about their behavior (such as through analytics and other behavioral metrics).

Another limitation of interviews is that the quality of the data collected is very much dependent on the interviewer's skill. If the interviewer asks many leading questions, the validity of the data will be compromised.

Interviews are a popular method to learn about users: what they think, do, and even need. Treat user interviews like a research study, not an informal chat. Compose research goals before crafting a guide. During your interviews be careful not to lead participants and make sure to follow up with further questions. Finally, complement interviews with observation-based research to attain an accurate and richer picture of users' experiences.

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Mastering UX user interviews: Guide, tips, and examples

User interviews are a crucial part of the product design process because they allow us to gain insight into the needs, behaviors, and motivations of the product users.

The main goal of user interviews is to understand the user’s pain points and needs. These key insights will help us to make decisions about the UX design and ensure that the final product meets the user’s needs.

The purpose of the article is to explain this technique 360 degrees, why we use it during UX research, which kind of data you can collect, how to prepare the questions, what you can do with the data, and provide you with many tips that will help you to make a great user interview process.

Table of contents

Quantitative and qualitative research, what are user interviews, and what are they not, when and why you should conduct user interviews, user interviews have limitations, preparing for a user interview.

• Onsite vs. remote interviews

Writing the script for the interview

During the interview, after the interview.

We can collect two kinds of data during user research: qualitative and quantitative data.

Quantitative data comes from analytics tools that tell us what happens. For instance, they can show how many users add products to their cart and leave the page without buying anything.

Qualitative data comes from interviews, observations, and focus groups to understand why certain things happen. For example, if we saw that 35 percent of people abandoned their shopping carts with items in them, we could interview them to find out why.

Quantitative and qualitative data are valuable information that help us understand our users. Quantitative data tells us what happens, and qualitative data tells us why.

We can indeed gain insights from every conversation we have with a user. But rather than a simple conversation we have along the way, an interview is a structured process we do during the UX research process with a clear objective: to know the user and their needs better. Let’s take a closer look at what a user interview is not.

It is not a sales meeting

User interviews aren’t sales meetings. During a user interview, we can’t push our product. Product designers don’t make sales, but sometimes a sales rep gets invited. We should explain to them that we are listening to the user in that meeting, not selling them anything.

User interviews are not a features feedback meeting

User interviews are not the place to discuss upcoming features or potential solutions to the user’s problems.

First, users cannot consider the product architecture and the company’s dependencies.

Aside from that, users tend to focus more on their existing solutions than on developing new ones. As Henry Ford said, “if I ask what people want, they will say faster horses.”

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This is not a usability test

When product designers run a usability test, they check if the user understands the designer’s solution. Our objective when performing a usability test is to determine if the user understands the interface to perform some actions and if the flow is smooth.

Therefore, in the user interview, we ask the user about their needs and pain points, and in the usability test, we want to see if they understand the solution.

Interviewing users is a very effective way to build products that solve people’s problems, and it can be used in different ways during a product’s lifecycle.

First, we can use user interviews to find a problem, for example, before we start building a startup company. We can focus on one topic, like buying online, and ask people what they don’t like about it. Maybe we’ll find a big problem many people suffer from, and we’ll figure out that there’s much to fix.

If we have a product and want to grow the business and solve more problems, it’s the same. We can conduct them and collect valuable information.

As a result of user interviews, you will have lots of data that you can use to create a user persona and user journey. That way, all the team members will be on the same page about the user’s needs and what the team wants to solve. Also, making decisions will be easier since everyone knows what the user needs.

First, people often need to remember what they did or they perform tasks automatically, so they don’t remember to share critical details. In addition, since everyone is different, the interviewer should be professional and know how to interact with each person so they will be open with them and share their experience.

It is important to follow certain steps before conducting a user interview, so let’s go over them.

Setting clear goals for the user interview

You need to write down your objectives for the interview. You usually have 3–5 goals, but if you have more than 5, your objectives need to be more focused.

For instance, if you have a website that sells shoes, your goals could be:

• Learn how people buy shoes online
• Learn why people like/dislike buying shoes online
• Learn why people abandon carts with products in them

Take the time to build this part well because if it’s done right, all the other parts will be easier.

Who and how many people to interview

It’s critical to consider your research goals and choose individuals who are relevant to those goals. For example, if you have an online store that sells running shoes, you must search for people who run because it will be more accurate. You won’t get accurate information if you choose users who don’t run.

The number of people you interview can vary, but generally, you should speak with between 3 and 8 people. If you interview fewer than three people, you might not get a representative sample, and interviewing more than eight people might take a lot of time and give you no additional insight. Aiming for a total of 5 interviews is often a good balance, as it allows for identifying patterns while still being manageable.

How to find users, and how to invite them

Finding people to interview can be tricky, but here are some places you can find them:

• Get in touch with existing users : If the product has some users, you can email them and ask if they’d like to join. You can get help from the customer success team or the sales team since they talk with users daily
• Forums and social media : Search for forums and other online communities that focus on the same topic and ask them to participate. If your product offers DevOps support, you can locate some developer communities specializing in DevOps and ask them to participate
• Using your network : If you have an extensive personal network, you may find people to interview through it. For example, if you develop tools for DevOps and have a direct connection with several DevOps professionals, you can ask them to participate

It is best to find users for a user interview through personal connections or introductions rather than cold emails. For example, a sales team member can introduce you to a potential candidate, and this can increase the likelihood that potential candidates will be receptive to being interviewed.

Preparing some templates for your emails will help you work faster. When you make your first connection with a user, you should send a mail explaining who you are and why you are conducting the interview. You should also send another mail explaining how the interview will proceed and set up a time, and the last email thanking the candidate.

To maintain a successful relationship with users, you must be honest with them and quickly respond to their emails.

Onsite vs. remote

You can observe the user’s body language better during an onsite interview. On the other hand, remote interviews have many advantages, such as interviewing people in different time zones and locations. In addition, it is much simpler since the other person doesn’t need to leave their comfort zone.

I prefer the remote option, but if some limitations require it to be done onsite, that is also an option.

The following tips will help you prepare for an onsite or online interview.

Interview onsite

• Prepare a comfortable place for the interview
• Make sure a water bottle is on the table
• Provide directions to the office, so the user knows where it is

Interview online

• Ensure your internet connection works well
• Get a quiet place to do the interview
• Ensure your headphones work and all your voice settings are set up correctly

A clear script with questions is essential to a successful interview. The script has four sections.

Introduction

First, we would like to introduce ourselves and the notetaker (a person who helps us take notes, such as a UX designer, a product manager, or a developer), explain why we are conducting the interview, how it will proceed, and that we are not testing the candidates or their knowledge. This will allow them to feel comfortable during the interview, so they will be more willing to share information.

If you want to record the meeting, now is the time to ask for their permission (I suggest you ask in writing ahead of time). Lastly, ask if they have any more questions before continuing.

Let’s break the ice

In this section, you will ask 3–5 questions to break the ice with your interviewee. For example, you might ask:

• Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your professional background?
• When did you first become interested in the field you work in now?
• In your current role or responsibilities, what do you enjoy most?
• When you have free time, what do you like to do?
• How does your typical day look?

The main interview questions

Here you ask the main research questions. Asking 10–12 questions will give you good results, but you should prepare 20–25 questions since some people are difficult to get information from, so more questions will help. To make it more structured, think about what you want to ask at the beginning and what is at the end. Here are some tips for writing them well:

Ask questions that align with your research goals. Don’t ask questions that are out of the scope of what you’re looking for.

Avoid leading questions because they can lead to biased or inaccurate responses and make the participant feel uncomfortable or pressured to give a certain answer. Let’s say we do user research for an online store that sells running shoes.

If you ask, “Can you tell me which websites you bought running shoes from?” you assume that the user bought the shoe online, but you don’t know that.

Would it be better if I asked, “Where do you buy your running shoes?”

Avoid vague questions because they can lead to unclear or confusing responses, making the participant feel frustrated. Instead, ask clear and specific questions.

An example of a vague question is: What do you think of the shopping experience on the website?

Better questions can be:

• How easy or difficult was it to find the running shoes you were looking for on the website?
• Which factors influenced your decision to buy or not buy a pair of shoes?

Open questions are better than closed questions. Open questions are better in user interviews because they allow the participants to express their thoughts and give you more insight. The answer to a closed-ended question can only be yes or no, so it won’t help us find the information we need.

An example of a close question is: “Do you buy your running shoes online?”

An open question will be: “Can you tell me how you buy running shoes?”

We sometimes want to ask a closed question to continue to ask questions. It is okay to ask a closed question and then an open question, so you can better understand how the user behaves. For example, you can ask the user, “Do you buy your running shoes online?”

If the answer is YES, you may ask:

• Why do you buy shoes online?
• Where do you buy your shoes online?

If the answer is NO, you may ask:

• Why do you not buy shoes online?
• Where do you buy your shoes?

Try to start with a big question. Starting with a big question and then asking related questions will enable you to dig more profoundly step-by-step. You can ask, for example:

“Can you tell me when was the last time you bought new running shoes?”

Then ask subquestions like:

• When was it?
• How long did it take you to choose the shoe?
• Where did you find them?
• What made you choose this brand/shoe?

The last question : At the end of this part, you can ask a very open question that will give you more information about the user. For example, “If you had a magic stick that could help you choose your next running shoe, what would it do?”

At this point, we’d like to thank the interviewee and explain what we plan to do with the data. Before you end the interview, ask the interviewee if they have any questions. In that way, you give them the final say.

To get quality information from the interviewees, there are some key things you need to do during the interview.

• During the interview, be calm and not nervous. Think of it as a conversation between two people
• The purpose of this session is to ask questions and to get information from the participants, so you should speak less and listen more. It is recommended that you speak 15 percent of the time and listen 85 percent of the time
• Please don’t shy away from negative user feedback about the product; you can gain valuable insight from users’ complaints
• If you see that the user wants to talk, but you finish all the questions in the script, don’t be afraid to improvise. Getting more experience in user interviews will help you to improvise better
• Occasionally, people talk little, and the call may feel silent. This is fine, and you can wait until the user continues talking. However, you can break the silence if it takes a long time
• When doing a remote interview, turn on the automatic captioning feature (you can find this feature in many online call apps). It’ll help you understand people better, especially if you’re doing it in a foreign language or if they talk with a strong accent
• As far as my experience shows, recording the interview and watching it again is the most effective way to ensure you get everything
• Search for pain points because this is where you can start finding solutions for users

This is the time to organize all the information you collected. You can summarize each interview and make the main points from it. Once you have summarized all the interviews, you can create a report that you can share with the product manager and the developers. In this way, the team can prioritize the following solutions it wishes to develop.

Further, if you are working on a new product, you can create a user persona and a user journey. As a result, all team members will be more knowledgeable about users and their needs.

All reports should be concise and to the point. Writing a long document is easy, but to effectively communicate the results, you must focus on the key points rather than getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. You can include links to the interview summaries if the team members need more explanation.

To conclude

User interviews are a crucial part of the product design process, as they allow designers to gain insight into the users’ needs, behaviors, and motivations. This article reviewed all the details you need to know to perform user interviews effectively.

We started by discussing what qualitative and quantitative research is and how user interviews fit into these categories. We also looked at when to conduct user interviews and how to prepare for them. This included setting clear goals, identifying users to interview, and deciding between onsite and online interviews. We also discussed how to create a script for the interview.

Next, we saw tips for conducting a smooth interview, and finally, we discussed what to do with the data you collected.

Featured image source: IconScout

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