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

My notes

• User interviews enable you to:
  • speak directly to your users
  • have specific questions answered
  • uncover previously unknown details and directions
• Badly scripted questions can:
  • result in biased questions and therefore biased answers
  • lead to a flawed foundation to product and business decisions

1. Start with a problem statement

• What are the questions you want answered?
• Create a list of all the questions you need answered to gain better understanding

2. Reframe the problem statements

• Rephrase the questions from different perspectives:
  • logical/rationale-driven
  • emotion/desire-driven
  • product/consumer-focused
• Benefits:
  • uncovers additional opportunities to learn about your users, specifically those you hadn’t previously considered
  • creates the foundation of your interview questions

3. Develop your questions

• Avoid leading questions
  • Leading questions will influence the answers you receive from you interviewees
  • They infer that something is true where it might not be
• Avoid speculative questions
  • if asking about the past, be as specific as possible
  • speculative questions invite interviewees to fill in the gaps or completely invent a scenario
  • aim for genuine and insightful data
• Ask open-ended questions
  • open-ended questions invite interviewees to add details around the central theme
  • answers to open-ended questions unpack invaluable information that would otherwise be undiscovered by a more specific question
• Ask multiple questions to inquire about one thing
  • offers an opportunity to verify that you’ve understood the interviewee and check for contradictions
  • avoid asking these questions concurrently, instead pick a the next natural moment in the flow of conversation
  • data triangulation can also help
  • Avoid asking if an interviewee would purchase or use the product
    • this is an uncomfortable position for your interviewee to be put in and they will probably say “yes” even if they don’t mean it
    • instead, ask about their intent to purchase

4. Be prepared to paraphrase your questions

• it’s possible an interviewee won’t understand your question
• being prepared to rephrase a question will keep the interview flowing

5. Add structure to your question list

1. Introduction
   • put the interviewee at ease by explaining the purpose of the interview and where the data is going
   • avoid explainig too much to maintain natural responses to questions
   • Thank the interview for attending and introduce yourself
   • keep the introduction brief
   • ask permission: audio and video recording, photos etc
2. Warm up
   • ask 3-5 generic questions
   • occupation/what’s an average day like?
   • hobbies
   • internet usage
3. Main
   • ask as much as possible
   • start with specific past events then speculative questions
   • ask questions that suit the conversation, introduce the theme then dig deeper
4. Wrap up
   • make it clear that the interview is over
   • ask if they have any questions
   • thank then for their time and contribution