BYD TechThe short answer
A good user interview is a conversation about what someone actually did, not what they think of your idea. Recruit people who match your target user, prepare a few open questions about a specific recent experience, listen far more than you talk, and dig into details with "tell me more about that". Avoid leading questions and pitching. Afterwards, look for patterns across interviews rather than acting on any single one.
Key points
- Ask about the past: "the last time you did this", not "would you".
- Recruit people who really have the problem.
- Talk less. Silence draws out the useful details.
- Never pitch during an interview. You will hear politeness, not truth.
- Patterns across several interviews matter more than one quote.
What interviews are good for
Nielsen Norman Group describes user interviews as a quick, easy way to collect user data, and warns that they reveal what people say, which is not always what they do. They are excellent for understanding problems, context, motivations and language. They are poor at predicting whether someone will use or buy a product.
Recruiting the right people
- Define who you need: their role, situation and the problem they have.
- Screen with a few questions about their recent behavior.
- Five to eight interviews per type of user usually shows the main patterns.
- Avoid relying only on friends. They are too kind and often not the target user.
What to ask
| Avoid | Ask instead |
|---|---|
| Would you use a tool that does this? | Tell me about the last time you had to do this. |
| Is this a problem for you? | What is the hardest part of doing this today? |
| How much would you pay for this? | What have you tried already, and what did it cost you? |
| Do you like this design? | Walk me through how you would do this task here. |
Rob Fitzpatrick’s The Mom Test is built on the same idea: ask about their life, not your idea, and people cannot mislead you even if they want to be kind.
During the interview
- Explain that there are no wrong answers and you are not testing them.
- Start broad, with their role and day, then narrow to the specific experience.
- Follow up with "why", "tell me more" and "what happened next".
- Let silences run. People often add the important detail after a pause.
- Do not explain or defend your idea. If they ask, say you will share it at the end.
- Record, with permission, so you can listen instead of writing everything.
After the interviews
- Write a short summary within the same day, while it is fresh.
- Tag problems, workarounds and quotes across all interviews.
- Look for what several people said independently.
- Separate what people did from what they said they would do.
- Turn the findings into decisions: what to build, what to cut, what to test next.
Interviews come before building in How to validate a startup idea, and before redesigning in a UX audit. Research of this kind feeds the flows we design in UI/UX design.
Sources
Checked when this guide was written.
