Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

We don’t have time in our development process to interview our users, so what should we do?

Chapter 4, “More Than Just Asking Questions,” introduces a range of methods that can enhance your interviews, including artifacts you prepare and take with you, activities you ask participants to engage in, or materials you develop together with them.

Chapter 3, “Getting Ready to Conduct Your Interviews,” describes the steps to prepare for a user research study, from identifying the problem to finding participants and preparing your questions.

Chapter 2, “A Framework for Interviewing,” defines an approach—a way of being—for interviewing.

Working with research data is a combination of analysis, or breaking larger pieces into smaller ones (for example, interviews and transcripts into anecdotes and stories) and synthesis, or combining multiple pieces into something new (for example, building themes, implications, and opportunities).

Check out interviews in the media: Terry Gross, Charlie Rose, Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey, and Marc Maron are good places to start (see Figure 8.4). Watch and listen as an interviewer, not just an audience member.

Summary
When you’re out in the field, actually doing your interview, keep the following in mind:
• Your field guide is a guide. Set it aside until you really need it.
Leading the interview successfully comes down to you.
• Although it’s tricky, ask the shortest question you can, without directing them to possible answers you are looking for. Then be silent.
• When you move from one topic to another, use transitional phrases such as “Great, I’d like to shift directions now….” or “Let’s go back to something you said before….”
• Pay attention to whether or not you have received an answer to your question. Be prepared to follow up multiple times using different types of questions.
• Reflect back the language and terminology that your participant used (even if you think it was “wrong”).
• If you want to fix something (say, a setting on their software) for your participant, wait until the interview is over.

Teach another. “If you had to ask your daughter to operate your system, how would you explain it to her?”
Questions that create contrasts in order to uncover frameworks and mental models:
• Compare processes. “What’s the difference between sending your response by fax, mail, or email?”
• Compare to others. “Do the other coaches also do it that way?”
• Compare across time. “How have your family photo activities changed in the past five years? How do you think they will be different five years from now?” The second question is not intended to capture an accurate prediction. Rather, the question serves to break free from what exists now and envision possibilities that may emerge down the road.

Ask about organizational structure. “Who do the people in that department report to?”
Questions that probe what’s been unsaid:
• Ask for clarification. “When you refer to ‘that,’ you are talking about the newest server, right?”
• Ask about code words/native language. “Why do you call it the bat cave?”
• Ask about emotional cues. “Why do you laugh when you mention Best Buy?”
• Ask why. “I’ve tried to get my boss to adopt this format, but she just won’t do it….” “Why do you think she hasn’t?”
• Probe delicately. “You mentioned a difficult situation that changed your usage. Can you tell me what that situation was?”
• Probe without presuming. “Some people have very negative feelings about the current government, while others don’t. What is your take?”
Rather than the direct “What do you think about our government?”
or “Do you like what the government is doing lately?” This indirect approach offers options associated with the generic “some people”
rather than the interviewer or the interviewee.
• Explain to an outsider. “Let’s say that I’ve just arrived here from another decade, how would you explain to me the difference between smartphones and tablets?”

Ask about sequence. “Describe a typical workday. What do you do when you first sit down at your station? What do you do next?”
• Ask about quantity. “How many files would you delete when that happens?”
• Ask for specific examples. “What was the last movie you streamed?”
Compare that question to “What movies do you stream?” The specific is easier to answer than the general and becomes a platform for follow-up questions.
• Ask about exceptions. “Can you tell me about a time when a customer had a problem with an order?”
• Ask for the complete list. “What are all the different apps you have installed on your smartphone?” This will require a series of follow-up questions—for example, “What else?” Very few people can generate an entire list of something without some prompting.
• Ask about relationships. “How do you work with new vendors?” This general question is especially appropriate when you don’t even know enough to ask a specific question (such as in comparison to the earlier example about streaming movies). Better to start general than to be presumptive with a too-specific question.