How Can You Get the Most Out of Your User Interviews?
The Do’s and Don’ts of User Interviews
A big part of a product’s success are the people who use it and are willing to pay for it. So, it is important that they are included in the product design and ideation process. Now, obviously, you cannot bring all the users into your company and take all their inputs but a good way to get a general sense of what users would want and like is by conducting user interviews. So, while I won’t be talking about the exact questions to ask in an interview, I will talk about some of the good practices to follow and some of the common mistakes people make during a user interview.
The DO’s —
- Ask open-ended questions
It is important as an interviewer that you go into an interview with an open mind and be willing to be flexible. Sure, it is probably a good idea to have a rough framework to guide your interview call but being too rigid with that framework might lead to you losing out on some key insights from your potential user. So, in order to get the most out of this interview, it is a good practice to ask open-ended questions and let the user do the talking. This will help you learn more about the user’s mentality and thought process than a rigid framework. Who knows, you might even get some information that you were not originally looking for.
2. Find the underlying Job-to-be-Done
Products are often driven by how they make their users feel. People might not remember the exact features of a product but they most likely will remember how they felt when they used your product. Do your users feel happy when they use your product? You’re onto something. Do your users feel good about themselves when they use your product? You going in the right direction. It eventually comes down to what their end goal is and why they are/ they might use your product i.e. what is their underlying job to be done? So instead of looking for what they would like in a product, try looking for what they are trying to achieve by using the product.
For example — If you are trying to build a hair salon, instead of getting best-in-class equipment, you might want to focus on why users would come to your salon. Is it to get a fresh look? Is it to get a new haircut to get over a breakup? Or maybe use your hair salon as a hang-out spot with friends? Either way, once you get a sense of what this underlying Job-to-be-Done is, you can tailor your product to the specific needs of your user
3. Talk about their current products
A great way to understand what your user like and dislikes is by talking to them about the products they currently use to get the job done. Some of the questions you could ask are -
- What do you currently use to get the job done?
- Why did you choose this product? (Digging deeper into this can help you understand what they like)
- What other products did you consider using?
- The product that you currently used, how is your experience with it? Is there anything specific that you like or dislike? (This could be a BIG one because it's sufficiently targeted to give your user a direction for their answer but at the same time it's quite open-ended so the user can go on a rant if they wanted to. P.S — that's exactly what you want!)
The DON’Ts —
- Do not defend your idea/product
This is one of the most common mistakes that most product owners and inventors make. I, myself as a Product manager have been guilty of doing this as well. We are so in love with our idea or our product that we forget to listen to what the users really want. So, when they tell us something that goes against our mental model for the product, we often start defending it immediately. PLEASE, DON’T! Critique from potential users is exactly what you want from these interviews.
By defending your idea, you are losing out on a lot of valuable information on what the users might like about the products. Once you start defending yourself, users might get conscious and not tell you their honest feelings about the product. So just sit back and listen, listen to all the critiques, and note them down. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. You might not decide to implement all the things that your user mentioned but you never know what those critiques might lead to which might eventually help you avoid mistakes and thus, not delay your product’s progress.
2. Never ask what features they want
Another common mistake that is made in user interviews is directly asking what they would like in the product. Don’t get me wrong, users will tell you what they want, even in great detail. But the reason this is a mistake is that the suggestions that the users give will be highly local and will be restricted by the scope of their imagination and thought processes. Instead, as I mentioned earlier, try to learn more about their pain points and what they are trying to achieve. In a nutshell, when you are talking with a user or a potential user, look for problems, not solutions!
3. Never ask if they will use the product
This is an extremely dangerous trap for any product owner out there. If you ask a user if they will use the product when you are trying to build it out, the users will most likely say yes to this question. There could be a couple of reasons behind this —
- They don’t want to hurt your feelings or come off as rude or mean
- They don’t have to pay for it right now so saying yes doesn’t hurt.
But this could be very dangerous for you as a product owner because this can give you false positives and trick you into believing that you have a potential buyer. Adding this to the already high love you have for your products can prove to be fatal to your product’s progress. Instead, ask for the ‘least success factors’ that they would want to see. The least success factors in this context refer to the pain points that are essentially top problems for them and in order for them to buy your product, they need to see these pain points are being solved. If you are targeting the right market segment, over time you will start seeing overlapping pain points between users. If you solve these, users will automatically buy your product.
All of this is to ultimately say, LISTEN! Listen closely to your users, their expressions, and their body language. All of these are cues that can help you get the most out of your interviews with the users.
