How to: Asking good questions in a user interview

Even though I’ve been doing user interviews for a while, I still write a conversation guide every time.

I know researchers who prefer topic maps, thought clouds or just keep all their goals in their head and wing it (dang!). But I still prefer a conversation guide — mostly for the process of writing it, more than the process of using it to any strict extent. Taking the time to pre-think about how I’ll phrase my questions, and what questions are most important to cover, makes the interview roll so much more smoothly.

I was talking to a client recently about the mindset you get into when you’re in a user interview, and we were trying to nut out why exactly it’s so exhausting. Definitely it’s because you’re always “on”. But what does “on” actually mean?

I think it’s because there’s a set of layers that almost every thought and sentence has to pass through to be said, and all of those layers need to be operating at an almost automatic level for the interview to feel natural and relaxed to the person being interviewed.

Here’s what layers are going on:

You’re listening to what they’re saying.

You’re thinking about what question you want to ask next.

Then you’re translating that question from totally leading-question phrasing into open-ended phrasing.

You’re also thinking about the topic they’re talking about, and measuring whether you’ve covered everything you wanted to cover in that topic. You’re thinking about how to smoothly transition this topic into the next one. And thinking about how you’re going for time.

On top of all this, you need to be really listening to what they’re saying, and focused enough on hearing it that you take it in, enough to actually learn from it.

And! As well as all this, you’re trying to create a sense in the room of comfort, trying to build rapport with the interviewee, be charming, build trust between the two of you and allow them the space to be honest and open.

And! There’s a high chance you’re also doing all of this while being observed by eleven of your colleagues, clients and stakeholders. Possibly being filmed too.

No wonder it’s exhausting. If it looks like you’re just having an hour long conversation, you’re making it look good.

This is why I write conversation guides with fully phrased questions. The process of pre-thinking about what I want to talk about with each interviewee, and writing out the questions beforehand helps take one of the stresses off. Even though I always go off-script (and in fact would never want not to), having those non-leading phrases and ways to frame questions prebuilt in my head is really useful.

Here’s how I write a conversation guide for a user interview.

Starting the interview

I always build in time for some small talk at the start of the interview. I’ve written before about making user interviews feel like conversations, and why a natural-feeling conversation with a person who’s feeling comfortable can result in far more open and nuanced insights. Building rapport is so important, if you can nail it.

So I’ll always spend a little time just chatting about how they got here today, how the weather is, whatever comes up. Don’t let them feel like a cog in the wheel.

Frame the situation, to help them feel comfortable.

Then we’ll jump into the interview.

I’m a big proponent of framing, whether it’s in sales, in facilitating meetings, or in conversations. How you set up the situation can have a massive effect on how the situation plays out. I’ll frame the user interview in the terms I want the participant to understand it: they’re providing me a service by providing their information and feedback.

I’ll give you a bit of background on what we’re doing here and why. We are part of the software design team here at Listen. Part of our design process is talking to people about how they think about topics we’re designing around and getting direct feedback on what we’re making, so that’s why we’ve brought you in today.

Just so you know, there are no right or wrong answers.

We have about an hour of your time, is that right? We’ll go through a few questions we have for you, and then do a little activity / show you a prototype.

Do you have any questions before we get started?”

Letting the interviewee know how long we expect from them and what the plan is also gives them a sense of security about what’s coming up. Nobody likes being at the mercy of a researcher and wondering what’s coming next.

Start with simple questions that are easy to answer.

Never skip warm up questions!

Think about how your participant might be feeling right now. Potentially, the only situation they’ve been in similar to this is a job interview. They’re liable to be kinda nervous - maybe wondering whether they’re fully prepared for this. The last thing you want is to get them feeling like a failure by throwing tough questions at them right off the bat.

“Tell me a little about you. Whereabouts do you live?”

“What do you do for work?”

“What devices do you use the internet on?”

Start to direct them into the mindset of what you want to talk about.

Warmup questions also serve another very valuable purpose — getting the participant into the mindset of what you want to talk about. If you want to learn about the ways people think about saving contact information, you can’t just slam that topic on them while they’re thinking about breakfast and expect to get interesting insights. You’re going to be better off starting asking an easy-but-related question and going from there.

“Do you have a business card?”

“When’s the last time you gave one to someone?”

“When’s the last time you got given a business card?”

“What did you do with it?”

“Did you ever contact them?”

“If you wanted to contact them now, how would you find their details?”

If there’s a ‘burning issue’, let them get it out early.

So, your participant knows they’re here to talk about business cards. They answered a screener with questions about their business card, they saw the sign on the door that said “Welcome, business card research participants”.

They’ve been running through everything they know about business cards for the last half an hour. It’s on the tip of their tongue. If you try to start by asking them about their wallet, they’re just going to, in some part of their mind, be waiting for the business card stuff to start.

Ask about that early and let them blurt out their story.

Reword leading or single word answer questions.

Now we’re getting into the meat of the interview. A trap I see people fall into a lot is asking leading questions. A leading question is one which, in its own phrasing, includes an assumption or a possible answer.

It can be especially tempting to fill in answers for people when you’re talking to someone who’s not very talkative.

“Why did you take a photo of their business card? Was it because you thought you might lose it, or you don’t like carrying them, or…*trail off*”

Don’t do this! Asking questions like this can skew your research findings, because the phrasing indicates to the participant that those are the answers you’re looking for. If they’re an agreeable person, they might (even without realising it) give you the answer they think you want.

You’ve laid a path of least resistance, and so now if their reasoning is different to the ones you suggested, they have to take a more difficult route to give you a correct answer. You made it easier for them to just agree with you.

Instead, just ask:

“What made you take a photo of their business card?”

And let them answer on their own.

Look for comparable behaviours rather than asking “would you use this?”.

It’s very hard to get reliable information about whether someone would use an app by asking them, “Would you download this app?”. It’s impossible to predict the future, so you’re at best getting their best guess.

Rather than that, a more interesting line of questioning is to dig for comparable behaviour that would indicate a desire to solve the problem you’re solving.

Let’s say our hypothesis is that people need an app to replace business cards for contact management. Perhaps we ask them to show us their contacts in their phone, and see how they’re managing their contacts on their phone now. Maybe we can learn a lot about what their problems are by seeing if and how they’re solving them.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions.

It might sound silly, but don’t be afraid of a direct question. It’s unusual how much we don’t ask direct questions of each other socially. Try it today: ask a friend a direct question, like, “What’s the best thing that happened to you today?” Does it feel a little bit odd or uncomfortable to ask it?

Now watch how they respond. I think you’ll be surprised by how comfortable people actually are answering direct questions about themselves. You might have to get over a little hump to get used to asking direct questions like this, but once you’re used to it you’ll be a better interviewer, and perhaps a better conversationalist too.

Ask one question at a time.

Another common thing that trips people up is asking long, drawn out questions that contain a bunch of words.

“When’s the last time you gave someone a business card, and why was it? And tell me about where it was and what happened before and after, and how you were feeling about it…?

The problem with this is that as soon as you’ve finished asking the first part of the question, the participant is probably poised to answer. They’ve like, already drawn the breath to answer, and for the rest of the time you’re talking they’re just waiting to talk — as well as now gathering in their head all of the different things you’ve asked, and they’re now feeling unsure where to start. It makes it harder for them to answer you.

Instead, try to ask one question at a time. “When’s the last time you gave someone a business card?”

Easy to answer. Un-distracting. And ask the rest of the questions as follow ups.

Gracefully signal you’re close to the end of the interview by saying:

“We’re just about coming up for time, but I have one final question for you: ___”

I use this phrase every time.

It can feel kind of awkward to end an interview. You’re working on building rapport, getting to know this person, having a really good conversation, and suddenly, you have to cut it off. By letting them know it’s almost over, you pre-empt the end without it feeling abrupt.

Wrap up with a final, broad question.

“We’ve been talking about managing your contacts for a while. Has this brought up anything else you’ve been thinking about lately that we haven’t talked about?”

Then throw it over to the note taker to ask any questions they’ve had during the interview.

Workshop participants interviewing each other.