Interviewing Users: How To Uncover Compelling Insights
Released in 2013, Interviewing Users has quickly become a classic, recommended for anyone who should be talking to users. Researchers, designers, managers and leaders all benefit from interviewing techniques and tools that enable you to conduct informative interviews with anyone. Youll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people.
The 7 Stages Of An Interview According To Steve Portigal
Portigal asserts that most interviews follow the same seven stages â it doesnât matter if the interview is for product development or design research, they will still have elements in common. By recognizing each stage, itâs easier to prepare and facilitate more informative interviews, gaining valuable user insights for your research.
Connecting Your Interview Questionnaire To Your Studys Hypothesis
When asked to think about invaluable interviewing techniques not covered in Interviewing Users, Bindu shared some key planning strategies every user researcher can employ beforehand.
âLearn to connect your interview questionnaire with your hypotheses,â she emphasized, âso you donât end up in a situation where you don’t have the data that you need. This also ensures your research is lean and can be traced back to your research questions.â
She likes to use the Hypothesis-Driven Process, something she came across during her ongoing efforts to improve as a researcher. Hereâs what that process looks like on her team:
On a recent research project, her team worked to come up with three or four broad research questions about the project, then they listed their assumptions about that topic. When she says assumptions, she means things like âpeople love to change music playlists per their moodâ or âpeople listen to music on short driving trips and podcasts on longer road trips.â
Bindu calls this âgathering the essenceâ of the study. She asks colleagues to share their assumptions, compiles them into one list, and then chooses the most important ones for testing. Each assumption requires its own specific questions and testing methods. Ideally, youâll end up with overarching hypotheses.
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Adapting Portigals Best Practices To Fit Remote User Research
Some of Portigalâs advice transfers well to remote research. An interview can still move from broad to specific terms. You can still embrace the awkwardness, leverage silence, and slowly build rapport with your participant.
But you canât rely on body language and the way your room is arranged when youâre chatting over Zoom. Here are a few of the ways Bindu recommends for making a remote interview a success:
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