Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

What you’re learning is not an evaluation of the concept, but instead a deeper understanding of the design criteria for a future solution. Although concepts are the stimuli, you deliberately choose stimuli that contain some aspect of your hypotheses, ideas, or questions in a tangible form.

Two questions that work really well here are: • If we came back in five years to have this conversation again, what would be different? • If you could build your ideal

The general flow of most interview guides is:

You should ask the stakeholders

I privilege observing and participating over asking and telling. A successful field visit is one in which, at the end, the participant feels like they’ve made a new friend rather than like they’ve just been interviewed.

Are you asking the question in a way they can answer? In a study about customer service, a participant complained passionately about the poor telephone service he received from a retailer.

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

Physicians and therapists are familiar with the “doorknob phenomenon,” where crucial information is revealed just as the patient is about to depart. So consider keeping your recording device on, even if it’s packed up.