Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

interviewing customers is tremendous for driving reframes, which are crucial shifts in perspective that flip an initial problem on its head.

“I want to go back to something else you said....” Not only does this help the person know that you’re looping back, it also indicates that you are really paying attention to what they are telling you, that you remember it, and that you are interested. If

If it’s very challenging to find the people that you expect (or are expected) to do research with, that’s data.

there’s often a point when the participant shifts from giving short answers to telling stories (see Figure 5.4).

The questions you ask are signifiers that you are listening. Try to construct each question as a follow-up to a previous answer.

This looks more like a framework for how to be, rather than a list of what to do.

people find the pain of the problem to be less annoying than the effort to solve it.

the verbal exchange is a deliberate, learned specialty that goes beyond what happens in everyday conversation. For you

This discomfort presents itself in subtle ways; rather than frowns and squirming, you may observe stiff posture and clipped deliberate responses. They may fend off your questions (while seemingly answering them) by implying that those are not normal things to be asking about, or providing little or no detail about themselves, describing their behav

that people don’t necessarily experience all those stages or experience them in that order. A contrasting model is the beat sheet (see Figure 5.1), a tool for screenwriters that lays out the necessary sections of a typical three-act screenplay, a ubiquitous structure for Hollywood films. There are even beat-sheet calculators that will take the numb