Tips for doing user interviews

Febuary 12th, 2024
Bellevue, WA

Image from Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Notes from Ground Rules for Interviewing in Value proposition design written by Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneru, Greg Bernarda, and Alan Smith

I working on a project right now that is at the stage where we're starting to chat a bit more with potential users. Been going through the Value proposition design book for guidelines and tips on how to better understand the pains of the target user group. Here's a small section on what the book calls "Ground rules for interviewing" or talking to people.

Rule 1: Adopt a beginner's mind

You may think you know the person or group you are interviewing, but you'll learn much more if you leave all your asumptions at the door. Our biases can make us lead the conversation one way or another. We need to have guidelines to keep the topic focused, but allow for unexpected things to pop up and see where it can take you.

Rule 2: Listen more than you talk

Pretty straight forward, let to other person open up and have the space to drive the conversation more naturally. You are here to absorb as much information from them as possible.

Rule 3: Get facts, not opinions

Some questions are too open ended, and maybe end up in a very opinion type answer. Asking more specifically like asking "When was the last time you ..." or "How many times a week do you .." can lead to more specific facts.

Rule 4: Ask "why" to get real motivations

Asking a lot of "why?" questions will help you dig deeper past the surface level.

Rule 5: The goal of customer insight interviews is not selling/buying in (even if a sales is involved) It's about learning.

Getting a sale or download etc is a pretty strong validation of your product/solution. But depending on how early on this is, especially if it's more of an exploratory interview to figure out product market fit, this is your chance to have a better understanding of their purchasing criteria without forcing a decision. Use this opportunity to ask "how do you decide what you use/purchase?"

Rule 6: Don't mention solutions (i.e., your prototypes value propositions) too early

If you talk about your product or solutions too early in the conversation, the conversation will quickly revolve around that one solution. Before you get too into a single solution, see if the person you're interviewing might have a different take or angle about how they might approach the problem. Once this door closes, it's very hard to open back up again without your solution biasing their thinking.

Rule 7: Follow up & always open doors

There are 2 questions I like to end the interview with. The first is "Would it be cool if we continued this conversation later again?". A repeat interview over a period of time allows you to see the change between the first interview and the 2nd. Maybe even to dig deeper into a particular area that you have decided to focus in on, or to clarify something they mentioned in passing on the first round. The second question is "Is there anyone else you think we should talk to about this?". It's always good to be building up a pool of people that you can chat with and increase your coverage of the target user group.

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