Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

I privilege observing and participating over asking and telling. A successful field visit is one in which, at the end, the participant feels like they’ve made a new friend rather than like they’ve just been interviewed.

Are you asking the question in a way they can answer? In a study about customer service, a participant complained passionately about the poor telephone service he received from a retailer.

This discomfort presents itself in subtle ways; rather than frowns and squirming, you may observe stiff posture and clipped deliberate responses. They may fend off your questions (while seemingly answering them) by implying that those are not normal things to be asking about, or providing little or no detail about themselves, describing their behav

that people don’t necessarily experience all those stages or experience them in that order. A contrasting model is the beat sheet (see Figure 5.1), a tool for screenwriters that lays out the necessary sections of a typical three-act screenplay, a ubiquitous structure for Hollywood films. There are even beat-sheet calculators that will take the numb

Physicians and therapists are familiar with the “doorknob phenomenon,” where crucial information is revealed just as the patient is about to depart. So consider keeping your recording device on, even if it’s packed up.

Near the end of the interview is a great opportunity to ask more audacious questions. Because you’ve spent all this time with your participants, talking through a topic in detail, they’ve become engaged with you. You’ve earned their permission to ask them to go even farther beyond the familiar. Two questions that work really well here are: • If we

Don’t do this. Ask your question and let it stand. Be deliberate about this. To deal with your (potentially agonizing!) discomfort during the silence, give yourself something to do—slowly repeat “allow silence” as many times as it takes. Use this as a mantra to calm and clear your mind (at least for the moment). If the person can’t answer the quest

Let the participant know what to expect by giving a thumbnail outline of the process: “We’ll take about 90 minutes with you.

Ask, “What would we design for this user?” Don’t worry about being too conclusive; this is a provocative way to start making sense of the interview. You aren’t making design decisions; this is hypothetical, speculative, and easily discarded when future data takes you in a different direction. Make sure that your fellow researchers understand hypoth