Guide for User Interview Preparation and Formulation of Appropriate Inquiries
**Designing Effective User Interview Guides: A Comprehensive Guide for Qualitative Research**
User interviews are a vital tool in qualitative research, providing in-depth insights into user experiences and behaviour. This article outlines key steps for creating an impactful interview guide, ensuring structured conversations while allowing for flexibility and exploration.
**1. Define Clear Research Goals and Objectives**
- Clarify the purpose and focus of your interviews. - Write specific research questions or hypotheses to guide the conversation.
**2. Identify Target User Groups and Recruit Participants**
- Select participants who represent your actual users or user segments. - Define criteria such as demographics, behaviours, and use appropriate recruitment methods.
**3. Structure the Interview Guide**
- Introduce yourself, explain the purpose of the interview, and set expectations. - Start with easy questions to help participants relax. - Organise main questions around research objectives using open-ended questions. - Prepare prompts to dig deeper into interesting responses. - End with an open invitation for any additional thoughts or questions. - Include optional topics in case you finish early or want to explore new avenues.
**4. Use Open-Ended Questions**
- Encourage rich, detailed stories and experiences by avoiding yes/no questions. - Ask questions like, “Can you tell me about a time when you used [product/service]?”
**5. Prepare for Flexibility**
- Treat the guide as a roadmap, not a rigid script. - Adapt questions based on participant responses to follow interesting threads while staying aligned with objectives.
**6. Pilot Test the Guide**
- Test the guide to refine questions and timing, ensuring clarity and flow. - Conduct a practice interview with a colleague or friendly user.
## Best Practices
- Show genuine interest and paraphrase responses to encourage detailed sharing. - Build rapport to create a comfortable environment for honest, open sharing. - Capture both verbal and non-verbal cues for thorough analysis. - Avoid leading or biased questions to ensure authentic responses.
## Example Interview Guide Structure
| Section | Purpose/Content Example | |------------------|----------------------------------------------------------| | Introduction | Brief explanation, consent, and rapport-building | | Warm-Up | “How long have you been using [product]?” | | Core Questions | “Can you describe your typical experience with [feature]?”| | Probing/Follow-Up| “What made that experience positive or negative?” | | Closing | “Is there anything else you’d like to add?” |
## Summary
An effective interview guide is structured yet flexible, centered on clear research goals, and designed to elicit rich, detailed user stories. Use open-ended questions, probe for depth, and adapt to the conversation while ensuring comfort and neutrality throughout the interview. Pilot testing the guide is essential for refining questions and timing.
Instead of asking questions like "how video streaming fits into their everyday lives," ask questions such as "Can you tell me about the last time you used video streaming?" or "How have your movie/TV-watching habits changed since you started using video streaming services?"
The interview guide should be tested to determine if it can deliver the promised insights. In a semi-structured interview, the interviewer has a carefully laid plan but also allows the flow of the conversation to decide how and when to ask questions.
When designing an interview guide, consider what questions are most suited for the beginning, middle, and end of interviews, but be prepared to change the order of questions to suit the flow of the conversation during the interview. Grounded theory methodology suggests allowing results to guide the decision on when to stop recruiting participants.
Involving stakeholders in the design project is crucial for ensuring stakeholder buy-in for the interview project. Information saturation is an ideal point to reach in an interview project. The purpose of user interviews is to find out why research is being conducted and what information is needed.
To optimize the learning process in user research, consider incorporating education-and-self-development into the interview process.
- Integrate principles of interaction design and UX design in your interview guide, aiming to enhance the user experience and overall interaction design.
- Utilize the insights gathered from user interviews to foster continued learning and refinement in your education-and-self-development journey, focusing on improving your understanding of user needs and behavior.
