Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Tiffany Cheng Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve conducted a dozen user interviews to uncover insights on what customers do and why they do it. I’d like to share a guide on how to go about implementing them for those who are just getting started or those who want to brush up. First stop…

Identify who you want to talk to

What are your research goals and what do you want to find out from the user interviews? Based on that, identify people who would be able to provide those insights. What kind of customers are they? Potential, new or existing? Are they B2C or B2B customers? Do you have a persona in mind? Think about who you’d ideally like to talk to and work from there.

For user testing, you typically need 5 participants for a specific test or flow to start seeing patterns. For user interviews, you will need 6–8 participants. E.g. if you’d like to compare and contrast the motivations of new and existing customers, you would want 8 participants for new and another 8 for existing. It is also recommended to have an equal number of male and female participants if possible.

Ask for help to find participants

During my first attempt to recruit participants, I had a lot of trouble recruiting. Forget finding the right participants, I couldn’t even find people to talk to! I learned the hard way that I need help from other departments to source participants.

A good place to start would be sales and customer support. They talk to new and existing customers every day to build relationships. They have a very good idea of their needs and what they struggle with. Use this to your advantage to find participants who match your criteria.

Another starting point would be the department that handles data; they are able to comb through the database and pinpoint specific people who match your needs. For example, they’d be able to find those who have signed up for your service or software in the last two weeks — that’s very precise and helpful!

When you take advantage of existing relationships, people are more likely to participate because they are familiar with your company and/or your colleagues.

If you are looking for potential customers, those who have not signed up with your company, it may be helpful to reach into your own network to see if you can find anyone. Another way is to have a third party recruit participants for you. And, if all else fails, try reaching out to people on LinkedIn. Sometimes they might not reply because they don’t know you, but it’s worth a shot!

Set up screener surveys

After identifying potential participants, set up and send screener questions for them to answer. The purpose of the screener is to filter out those who do not meet the criteria. Although part of identifying people relies on the criteria, there may be things you couldn’t have known. For example, you may want to filter out people who work in design and development firms, or those who have someone in their immediate family that does. They would know too much about the process and may have biased answers.

You can set up screener surveys fairly easily with Google Forms or Wufoo.

Resources

Recruiting Your Target Audience for UX Testing with Screener Questions | UserTesting Blog

Schedule participants

Once people start to sign up on your screener survey, you’ll need to book a time for them to speak with you in-person or remotely. It’s always better in person, but if that isn’t an option, then you can host a Google Hangout or something similar so you can hear and see the participant. It’s important to read their facial and body language on top of what they tell you. Typically a user interview session takes about 45 minutes. I usually book an hour in case it runs longer than expected.

To help with scheduling, try Doodle and Calendly.

Give an incentive for their time

If participants take the time to speak with you, they have gone through the trouble of arranging their schedule to make this happen. They could very easily use their time for something else. So in exchange, give them incentives to make their trip worthwhile. Some options for incentives include gift cards, some samples or discounts from your company (if that would appeal to them) or something that would be of value to them. It’s important to make them feel appreciated!

Don’t ask leading questions

During the interview, don’t ask your users leading questions. Some examples include, “What do you think of [feature name here]? Is it good or bad? Would you use [software or service name] again? Do you like our customer service?” These types of questions include some sort of bias, and they compel users to give an answer that you would be happy with — which defeats the purpose of the interview because you want honest answers. This is something that I’m currently working on as well and it takes practice. Here are some examples of neutral questions you can use:

What do you like or dislike about [insert something here]? Why?
How did you go about using [software or service name]? Can you show us?
When did you start using [blank]? How did you hear about it?

You’ll notice that these types of questions are very open-ended. You want your users’ response to be as descriptive as possible, so try to avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Allow them to elaborate to get as many details as possible.

Resources

5 Steps to Create Good User Interview Questions By @Metacole — A Comprehensive Guide

Write a script

Before the interview, write a script to guide the conversation. The script has two purposes: the first is to list all the questions you should ask during the interview, and the second is to prompt you in the event you go off track. It’s important to note that it’s completely okay to go off track, because users might say something interesting and you’d want to dig deeper into that topic. It may even be a better flow to ask some of the questions out of order. Remember, the script is only a guide so don’t feel tied to it. You are free to ask questions that aren’t in the script as well, whatever helps you get the most insight.

Steer the conversation

During the interview, participants can be very enthusiastic and talk about things that you didn’t necessarily ask about. It’s fine if it’s something you’re interested in, but if it’s not helpful, here are a few ways to steer the conversation:

“That’s really good feedback, thanks! Now if we backtrack a bit…”
“Good to know. What about…”
“Moving along…”

The essential structure is this: [acknowledge what they said] + [steer them to what you want to talk about].

Prompt for more details

Sometimes, participants can be the opposite of enthusiastic. They can be shy or someone who speaks very little. So what can you do get them to talk more? Here are some examples for prompts:

“What happened next?”
“What did you think about the experience?”
“How did [blank] make you feel?”

Have someone facilitate and another taking notes

I find it really important to have two people during the interview session. One person should take notes while another person drives the conversation. The person driving can focus on asking the right questions to uncover insights and dig deeper as necessary, while the note taker can focus on catching all the details for analysis. It’s really difficult when there’s only one person who does both, because there may be awkward pauses while you stop to write down the insights. It’s also not an efficient use of time. If there is no choice and you are the only one doing both, have a recording device so you can jot down all the notes afterwards.

What you take notes of is very important as well. It’s good to jot down notes on their behaviour, but when it comes to qualitative data, be sure to include their emotions, how they react to situations and why they do what they do. For note taking, I like to use Google Docs because it’s digital, shareable and collaborative.

Schedule more participants than you need

Sometimes, things happen and participants don’t show up. To mitigate that, schedule more participants than you need. In the event that they all show up, you simply have more information — and that doesn’t hurt anybody! Understandably, sometimes you just don’t have enough and there’s not much you can do. In those instances, you’ll have to work with what you have — some insight is better than none.

I hope you find this useful. Have you conducted user interviews before? If you have, what other tips or tricks do you have up your sleeves? I would love to hear about them!

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Follow me on Twitter @tiff_cheng

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How to Conduct User Interviews

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