Conducting User Experience Interviews

Last week, I coached a product team through a user interview debrief. They were excited! Users had shown enthusiasm for a new feature! 🎉 But when I asked, “What problem does this solve for them?” the room went quiet. 🫣 This happens more often than we’d like to admit. 🧠 The Trap: Mistaking Enthusiasm for Validation When users say, “That sounds great!” we often interpret it as validation. But here's the catch: - Users want to be polite. - They might not fully understand their own needs. - As product teams, we may hear what we want. This is why relying solely on user enthusiasm can lead us astray. 🔍 The Solution: Semi-Structured Interviews We need to dig deeper to understand our users truly. Semi-structured interviews strike the right balance between guidance and flexibility. Key practices include: - Start with hypotheses: Identify what you believe to be true. - Ask open-ended questions: Encourage users to share experiences, not just opinions. - Listen actively: Pay attention to what’s said—and what’s not. - Probe for underlying needs: Seek to understand the 'why' behind their behaviours. This approach helps uncover genuine insights, leading to solutions that truly resonate. 🌟 Imagine the Impact By adopting this method: - Teams build products that solve real problems. - User satisfaction increases. - Resources are invested wisely, reducing wasted effort. It's not just about building features—it's about delivering value. 🦾 Take Action Next time you're planning user interviews: - Prepare a set of hypotheses. - Design questions that explore user experiences. - Remain open to unexpected insights. Remember, the goal is to understand your users, not just confirm your assumptions deeply.

As user researchers, we ask participants to share their thoughts, frustrations, and struggles. But how often do we put ourselves in their shoes? Over the past decade, I’ve participated in over 500 studies—usability tests, interviews, surveys. Experiencing research as a participant will transform how you conduct it: 1. You’ll build deeper empathy for your participants It’s easy to forget how vulnerable it feels to answer questions, especially when: - The questions are confusing - The facilitator rushes you - You worry about saying the “wrong thing" Ask yourself: Are you making participants feel heard or hurried? You’ll only know when you’re in their seat. 2. You’ll sharpen your facilitation skills As a participant, you notice the subtle ways moderators impact a session: - Leading questions that nudge answers - Rapid pacing that shuts people down - Awkward silences that feel unnatural One leading question during a study swayed my response entirely. It taught me how powerful neutral phrasing can be: - “Tell me more about that.” - “Describe what stood out to you.” Great researchers don’t just ask questions—they create a space for honest answers. 3. You’ll design better questions Poorly worded questions are obvious when you’re the one answering: - Long, multi-part questions feel overwhelming - Vague or irrelevant ones make you disengage Re-evaluate every guide you write. If you stumble while reading a question aloud, your participants will too. Test your questions. Simplify them. Clarity leads to better answers. 4. You’ll respect participant time more When you’re on the other side, you feel how valuable time is. - Sessions that drag feel endless - Repetitive questions break trust and focus Every question must serve a purpose, and sessions must feel smooth and intentional. If you wouldn’t want to sit through your own session, don’t ask someone else to. 5. You’ll find blind spots in your work Being a participant humbles you. You see firsthand how even the best-laid plans can go wrong: - Questions can confuse people - Instructions can be misinterpreted - Participants can feel unheard When you experience these moments yourself, you’ll notice—and fix—them in your own work. Find a study, sign up, and put yourself on the other side of the table. You’ll design better sessions, sharpen your facilitation skills, and gain a whole new perspective on what your participants need. — Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost it to your network Want to up-level your UXR skills? Join my community of 9,000+ subscribers today: https://lnkd.in/eDC7wqcy Image via Midjourney

Leadership at the Interview Table A nervous candidate will never give you their best self. We know this, yet so many interviews still feel like firing squads. Questions fired off like bullets. Faces blank. Energy tense. We forget that on the other side of the table sits a human being....hopeful, anxious, rehearsed, and vulnerable. Why treat someone already nervous as though they’re standing before an inquisition? One colleague I have had the privilege of serving on panels with once said something that stayed with me: “It’s bad enough that people are nervous, delighting in breaking someone isn’t leadership.” That truth changed the way I approached interviews forever. This same colleague, an executive leader with vast experience in one of Africa’s most influential economies and a track record of managing high-performance teams, goes a step further. He uses the sessions to coach candidates in real time, offering feedback on how they can improve, how to better structure their answers, or how to express their experience with more clarity and confidence. He literally turns interviews into coaching moments. Interviews are not tests of toughness; they are windows into potential. And potential rarely shines under pressure designed to intimidate. The goal of an interview should be discovery, not dominance. When we create an atmosphere of respect, curiosity, and kindness, candidates open up. They show us what drives them, what they can contribute, and how they think. And when we realise a candidate isn’t the right fit, leadership calls us to deliver that truth with empathy. Because rejection handled poorly can bruise self-worth, but rejection handled well can become redirection. Leadership builds, even in moments where someone walks away empty-handed. Especially then. Because true leaders don’t just select talent. They leave people better than they found them. #LeadershipMatters #FutureOfWork #HiringWithHeart #EmpatheticLeadership #ASATT

When I teach new researchers how to conduct interviews for the first time, I like to stick to 3 guiding principles. When first learning, it can be overwhelming for new researchers to remember a long list of do's/don'ts or specific phrasing, tricks, or techniques to use or avoid. Instead, I want new researchers to first practice active listening and empathy, offering neutral questions and responses, and staying aligned with the research goals. If we can get these 3 principles down, we're in a good place to work on further fine-tuning interviewing skills from that solid foundation. 1. Active Listening 💕 Focus on truly understanding the user’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and showing them that you are interested and care about what they're telling you. Give your participant your full attention, use body language to show you're listening (e.g., nodding, eye contact), and notice for signs in their body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. You can respond to users' responses paraphrasing what they said to check for understanding, thoughtful follow-up questions, or an empathic acknowledgement of their feelings and experiences. The ultimate goal here is to foster trust and show participants you value what they're sharing with you, which can lead to more authentic, insightful feedback. 2. Neutral Questioning and Responses ❓ When asking questions and responding to participant answers, maintain neutrality. Avoid leading or priming questions that encourage participants to answer in a certain way or block them from exploring different directions. Focus on neutral, open-ended questions that encourage continued conversation and sharing. Neutrality doesn't mean being cold, we're still going to actively listening and show interest. You can warmly respond to users' responses in ways that don't reward or punish certain responses. We're just trying to set up our interaction the best we can so that users don't feel encouraged or deterred from providing certain feedback or sharing certain experiences. 3. Focus on Goals 🥅 Know the goals of the research and keep them in focus during the interview. If you know what the goals of the research are, you'll be much better able to formulate follow-up questions and follow the stories of users to relevant places your stakeholders are interested in. You'll also be aware of when to redirect or refocus the conversation when it veers too far away from the goals of your research. When I was starting out and feeling a bit shaky and nervous about interviewing, knowing the research goals well really helped me reaffirm to myself that I'm doing my job to answer our research questions, even if an interview didn't go as planned or if my confidence wavered. ❓ What other guiding principles helped you when you were first learning how to conduct user interviews? ❓ If you're currently learning how to conduct user interviews, what gaps do you see? #UXResearch #UserInterviews #QualitativeResearch #LearningUXR

Most people ask the wrong questions in client interviews. They ask what they want to know. Not what their client needs to say. Empathy interviews should be about collecting language, not data points. The holy grail? When someone hears you describe their problem better than they can describe it themselves. But most consultants, founders, and coaches stay on the surface. They never get to the words that actually matter. So I built a framework that I use with my clients: 5 layers of questions that peel back what's really going on. 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟭: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗿𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 → "What's the biggest challenge you're facing with [X] right now?" → "Walk me through what that actually looks like day to day." 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟮: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 → "What's the hardest part about that — not logistically, but personally?" → "How does this affect how you see yourself or your work?" 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟯: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗱 → "What have you already tried to fix this?" → "Why do you think it didn't work?" 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟰: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗮𝗽 → "What would it look like if this was actually working?" → "What's standing between where you are and where you want to be?" 𝗟𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝟱: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗪𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗱 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗻 → "If you could go back and tell yourself one thing before this started, what would it be?" → "What's the one thing you wish someone had told you earlier?" Each layer gets you closer to the core. And the core is where the insight lives. Good insights are what enable you to cut through the noise of competitors. Because you're the one who actually understands what they need.