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User Interview Questions

Mary Formanek
UX Planet
Published in
8 min readFeb 25, 2021

A quick guide (and helpful chart) for writing user interview questions.

people asking questions

Writing questions for a user interview shouldn't be hard. In theory, the purpose of these interviews is for two precise things: Getting a user persona and finding out in-depth information about the user's wants, needs, and opinions about your current or future product.

To do this you need to follow this simple process:

1. Figure out what you want to know.

List these things in priority. Base your questions off of what you wrote down. Branch off these questions for more in-depth or more out-of-the-box interview questions as well.

2. Find Users to Interview and Schedule Interview Times.

I like to schedule anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half per interview. Keep in mind that interviews are not usually done in front of the product. If you are asking a user to complete a task in your product during this interview, that is a user test. That is not the purpose of a user interview. A lot of users like an incentive to spend their time with you. If their boss is not telling them that they have to do it, offer a gift card or cash for taking time out of their day to help. (If you do offer a gift, make sure you get it approved by your company first.)

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Published in UX Planet

UX Planet is a one-stop resource for everything related to user experience.

Written by Mary Formanek

Staff Lead Product UX / UI Designer. UX Master Certified. Art Center College of Design Alum. President Emeritus of UXPA Arizona. Tik Tok: @UXwithMary

Responses (2)

What are your thoughts?

That's great advice for in person interviews! Would also be curious to hear thoughts on zoom user interviews? Some points carry over like not overfilling the room with your team, on zoom you wouldn't want the user to be overwhelmed by too many faces in the call either.

Keep in mind, user interviews are not typically done while the product is in front of the user. If you are doing a card sort, naming exercise, or identifying survey, you can print out s...

You wrote this out twice. Is this intentional?