Secrets of perfect user interview by Talebook
Very important phase in the whole UX research process is gaining informations from target users. That’s basically what’s the whole process all about — it focuses on user and his experience, so that is crucial for us to get to know what are his needs and problems at first.
User interviews help us to gain a deeper understanding of people’s behaviour and actions, so we could create a better product for them to use. Interviews are also one of the most commonly used methods in UX research, because it is a rather easy and cheap way to gain informations that we need.
How to choose users
Finding right people for user interviews is very often a tough and time-consuming process. It is important that your respondents are selected carefully and that they represent your target users — otherwise your insights won’t be relevant and helpful for your product.
First thing to know is what exactly is your target user. If you already made a stakeholder interview, you should know at this point what is the audience for the project, and based on those informations have your end-user profiles with specified metrics. What you need to do right now, is to reach out to people matching those criteria.
A way of recruiting for user interviews will depend on the type of project you’re working on — is it a general-use product for a wide range of users, or more specific one, aimed for a narrow group? Obviously in the second case, your recruitment process will require a bit more time and effort. You should also take into consideration how much time do you have and your budget — are you willing to handle the recruitment process on your own, or will you prefer to hire a recruitment agency? We’ve written down some most common ways of recruiting users in a post /link/ so fell free to check that one out, for more informations on how to find your respondents.
How to prepare for an interview
Script
Same as for stakeholder interview, if you want to have a valuable outcome, you need to be prepared well. Write down a list of questions that will be your script and help you to guide an interview. Remember though that the interview should have a form of conversation, and the script is only a map for you, that helps you to keep the discussion on the right path.
At first, you should agree on what do you need to know from your users, what answers do you seek for. For example, if your goal is to get to know how people are using calendar apps, we have to prepare questions that enable us to inspect the field, i.e. /what calendar apps are they currently using? how often? for professional or private purpose?/
It’s good to discuss those questions with the team, so you all know that you’re going the right direction.
Make sure that your questions are:
- non-leading — they don’t suggest any answer or any general approach to the topic
- open-ended — it will help you to avoid non-productive interviews, that won’t give you too many valuable insights
- specific and clear — speak the language that is understandable for your your respondent, keep your questions short and ask only one question at the time.
A list of sample questions you can find in Talebook User Interview Method
You can add it directly to your interview script, make changes and add your own questions that match your project.
Despite main, product-based questions, prepare also some warm-up questions to ask at the beginning of an interview. It can be 3–5 questions about your respondent, such as his occupation, hobbies, attitude towards technology. Those questions will help you to gain some basic informations about the user, but also they will make the respondent start to feel more comfortable for further discussion.
You can also find sample warm-up questions in Talebook, in X section and add it to your script.
Note-taking
To be prepared for an interview you will also have to plan how to gather the data you will get through the session.
The most comfortable way to do it is to record the interview — it enables you to be more concentrated on your respondent, don’t miss anything important, but also to analyse a non-verbal way of answering questions — like facial expressions, body language, tone of voice — that will help you to better understand your respondent.
Remember to always ask about permission to record, explain the aim of it and provide information on who will have an access to those recordings.
If you won’t decide to record an interview, you can do the note taking — by yourself or with a help of another person. Having someone for note taking will be, alike recording, way more comfortable for you to stay focused on the interview. If you will decide to take notes by yourself, try to choose smaller device if possible (i.e rather iPad that notebook) so you won’t make an impression of being too separated from the respondent, and also make sure to avoid any distractors — use not-disturb mode, don’t have any apps running on your computer that might be interrupting.
Whichever way of note taking you will decide to choose, you can either put notes during the interview directly into Talebook User Interview section, or fill them in after the interview. Then you can share these notes with the team, add comments and get back to them on further phases of project work.
How to conduct an interview
Intro
Start your interview with a short intro, while you will introduce yourself and explain the reason for your research. Try to break the ice, create an atmosphere of trust and make your respondent feel comfortable — warm up questions that you have prepared before will help you with that.
Before getting to the questions it is important to explain to respondent that there are no right or bad answers to your question, assure him that what you really need is his honest feedback.
An Interview
During the interview remember that you’re the one to steer it to right direction. So if your respondent tend to talk a lot (which is stil a good thing) remember about the script and make sure that you’re not getting too far from the main topic.
On the other hand, your respondent may be not that talkative, and give you very short answers. In that case you should ask some additional questions, prompt for more details.
From time to time make some follow ups — it will not only help you to make sure you got the answers right, but also will show your respondent that you’re listening carefully and it will give your interview more conversational form.
Wrap up
At the end of the interview it’s always good to ask if there is something more that your respondent would like to add or to ask you about — it is a good way to give a sense of closure but also can give you some additional insights. Always thank your respondent for his time and let him know that gathered informations are valuable and helpful.
What to do with the data?
Ok, you have gained a lot of feedback — what now?
Once you have all notes written down in Talebook, the tool will guide you through next steps, giving you exercises you should take to analyse the data you have and provide you with easy-to-use, editable templates. We will explore those exercises in the next posts.
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