The Secret to Great User Interviews

What’s the magic of a good first date? What makes people open up? What makes people say, Wow, I really like that person. In all cases: Listening. Listening is magical. And great User Interviews are about being a good listener.

Today, we’ll go into the fundamentals of what a truly great User Interview includes. 

~ Sam Grone, Co-Founder (Product)

Why even do User Interviews?

A little background: User interviews are part of the Product Development process.

User Interviews help confirm the direction or prioritization of a given product, and give valuable data about where to continue investing (or where to stop investing), before you’re too far gone down a development direction. If you build too far out without user data that someone actually wants this thing - you’ll face a lot of rework, upset Engineers and Sales teams, and potentially lost runway. Therefore, User Interviews are critical.

Ideally the Product Development process is something like this:

Idea > Data Gathering/ Benchmarking > Prototype > User Interviews (this can occur with a lo-fi mockup, a Figma design, or something drawn on paper - just get the idea out there) > Redirection/ Prioritization > Alpha > User Testing > Beta > User Testing > GA/ Launch.

We’ll go into the larger launch process in a later blog post, but just to provide background if you’re new to User Interviews in general. Okay! That said - what makes a great user interview? Let’s get started.

Recruiting User Interview Candidates

Payment & Outreach

You may have to pay your first few interviewees, especially if your product is unknown. I suggest $10 Amazon gift cards upon completion of the interview - just email this to candidates after the interview.

You can start with friends & family, but another technique is to garner users from social followings - either your own or your company’s, by advertising a link for a user study sign-up on LinkedIn, X, or IG. 

You can set this up with a Calendly link easily, specific to the e.g. 2 weeks that you are planning to run the user survey, and make sure the GMeet link is included there. When you send the invite, I recommend rewriting the invite title as “(Your Name) <> (their Name): (Company Name) User Research)” e.g.  “Sam <> Annie: JadeJungle User Research”; this gives your users a clear idea (no questions) about what is happening and who they are talking to. 

In your ask for the interview, I would structure as follows - again here the key is empathy; a lot of people are unfamiliar with user interviews, especially if they don’t work in tech, and worry about looking silly or getting a question “wrong” (there is no such thing in user interviews - more on that later). Here, we need to be very clear and gentle - these users are doing us a favor by donating their time and opinions for us to analyze; be kind. 

Example prompt: 

Hi there! I am leading Product at JadeJungle Consulting and I’d love to ask you a few questions about your use of Project Management software - would you have time for a 30 minute call? We’d really value your insights. For your trouble, we’ll send a $10 Amazon gift card as a thank you. <Click here to schedule>. 

Here, send your Calendly link in the schedule link. This message hits all the points - straightforward, friendly, not aggressive, apologetic and grateful for the time. 

Conversion Rate

This is similar to any party invite back in the day - invite 100 people, expect 80 to open it, 60 to respond yes, and 30 to actually show up. Similar logic here: If you want 10 great interviews (we always recommend 5-10 at minimum), you’ll need to send this out to 100 people - especially if they’re cold-calls. 

If they’re F&F (friends and family), you can anticipate a higher conversion rate, because they care about you personally. But note: F&F may not give you the objective feedback you need, and we can’t ask them for favors too often, so use F&F sparingly. 

Script

The script should be objective, start with easy intro questions, and hit all the main points of what you want to answer. 

Let’s say we’re testing a new checkout page for the Acme Products and want to see what existing users (and prospective users) think of this idea. We want objective feedback on whether or not this new checkout page is: more or less informative than the earlier one, easy to use, engaging, and how aesthetic it feels to users; and we want to know if our message resonates. For this checkout page, our metrics might be: time on page, bounce rate, conversion rate, or completed orders.

Creating the script doc

I recommend creating the script doc in Google Drive, with one level as “script” and then copy-pasting that to each candidate, alongside the candidate’s name and the date of the interview: Sample UR Script

NB:

• Each interview should not exceed 45 mins (30 mins of product flow, 10 mins of Q&A); beyond that, the interviewee will be tired and it’s a lot of time to ask for someone to do a favor for you

• Take notes throughout - either use Otter.ai, or take notes while you are talking to the user

• Maintain humility and empathy

• Regarding who else should be on the call - usually it’s Product, or Product + Design, or maybe 1 engineer; be careful that everyone on the call understands the script, and is capable of hearing unfiltered user feedback on the product; for this reason, sometimes it’s wise to only have the Product person on these calls, and share high-level feedback afterwards (i.e. from the deck - more on that below)

User Research Feedback & Conclusions

You’ve successfully completed 6-10 total user feedback sessions - amazing! Now’s the time to dig through the copious notes and recordings to draw conclusions. 

What are we looking for?

• Common themes

• Common complaints

• Common questions

• Common suggestions

• Similarities of experiences across a certain type of user (e.g. did all the users you interviewed who were under 25 say that they wouldn’t use this on desktop and ask about a mobile app? Note it.)

Now, we assemble this into a deck. This serves a few purposes: 

1. Present to leadership or other stakeholders.

2. Refer to user cohorts or archetypes in the future (e.g. “‘Dave’ is the average user in his 20s who uses this primarily on mobile; he’s often on the go and needs quick actions - what would Dave want from XYZ feature?”).

3. Help establish a product roadmap going forward - these users and they’re thoughts and complaints should help establish next steps, which might include:

1. Reworking the current product

2. Baking in changes to the next version

3. Changing prospective customer type (e.g. maybe you decide to focus on mobile users only, or you discover that the primary user for this feature is actually children between the ages of 13-18). 

Outline of the Deck

Background of study 

• How it was carried out (e.g. 30-minute Google meet interviews in Oct’24)

• User archetypes established e.g. Dave, Marla, Jean, Ziggy; with demographic data and conclusions for each type of user

Themes/ Conclusions

• Things users loved

• Things users hated

• Commonly asked questions/ interesting conclusions/ things we learned

• Implications for product roadmap going forward

• Suggestions of things to focus on or rework, or of new features

• Include rough LOE where available 

Appendix

• Users: brief backgrounds and demographic data, including OS/ devices used

• Prototype shared or questions asked of users

• Links to recordings, scripts and notes