User Interview Research

This is a cheat sheet by Stephanie Walter that is to help focus and guide user interviews, she has broken it up into sections that focus on the main questions and topics.

Open Discovery Questions

This is to open up the conversation, so very open questions that need more than a yes or no answer, with none leading questions

• “Tell me about …”
• “Why do you …”?
• “What is / are …?”
• “What … do you use / do ?”
• “Describe to me how you… / your experience with…?”
• “How often do you…?” (to ask about frequency and quantity)
• “How much/many…” (can also be used to probe level of knowledge like “how much do you know about this topic?”)

Understanding user tasks/activities

Starter questions that help understand the users, and how they perform tasks and activities.

• “How do you [task]…?” (direct)
• “Describe how you would [task]?” (indirect)
• “What are all the things you need to do and know in order to [task]?”
• Sequence: “Walk me through the steps, how do you [task]?”
• Comparison: “What is the difference between [task 1] and [other task]?”

Performing/showing

User interviews don’t have to be limited to questions you can also ask people to perform tasks.