User Interview Template

What is a user interview?

UX interviews are the quickest and most convenient way to collect user experience data, making them ideal for lean and agile environments. Most market research firms have adopted this technique in order to better understand their target audience and acquire a competitive advantage in the market.

Similar to journalistic principles, these interviews should be formal and straightforward. Basically, you can structure UX interviews into three main parts:

• An introduction that provides a quick overview of what the interview is all about.
• A series of warm-up user interview questions to make your users feel more comfortable.
• The main body where you can gather all the information you need to know about your users.

It’s also a good idea to leave some room for the interviewee to give their feedback. After you conduct a few interviews, your team can review this feedback and adjust your interview questions to optimize the feedback you’re getting.

What topics should be covered in the user interview?

User interviews can cover almost all user-related topics. Gather information on your users’ feelings, motivations, and daily routines, or how they use your product, what products they use in conjunction with yours and even what competitors they use now or before. Some topics to think about: 

• Background information (demographic or ethnographic data)
• User’s goals and motivations
• User’s pain points or hurdles
• General use of tools or software
• Internal operations or workflows

Don’t limit yourself to just these few topics. User interviews are quite adaptable and should be tailored to what you want to learn about your users and your product. The user interview template from Xtensio lists all of the important subjects you’ll need to cover, and it’s very simple to take notes in the editor while performing the interview!

How do you conduct an effective user interview?

One of the most common reasons some interviews fail is because they become sales pitches — but the goal of the user interview is to understand how your audience uses your product, their main business needs and the user experience. Think of your interviews as a user research study rather than a demo or sales pitch of your product. 

Here are three key points to keep in mind when conducting user interviews. Use this guide when working with the user interview template:

1. Set easy to follow goals for the interview
   

When you first start building your user interview template, decide what you want to learn from your user interviews. Be specific when you ask questions and make sure your goals are measurable.

Here are some good examples:

• Understand how employees feel about using the current project management software and what features they use on a regular basis.
• Learn how designers share mockups with developers and what common pain points they encounter during their user research.
• Find out how consumers respond to your new transaction process, where they think there are issues, and what they’d like to see improved.

2. As much as possible avoid leading questions

Limit the number of leading questions you ask. These are specific questions where you’re looking for a precise answer. For example, if you ask, “Why do you use Instagram so frequently?” you’re insinuating that this individual not only uses Instagram, but also frequently. “What social media sites do you use?” is a better question. The first question enables you to investigate what the user performs. The first question assumes something, whereas the second allows you to investigate a number of platforms they might utilize and leaves the door open to learning more about how they use those goods.

During your user research, you should also op for open-ended questions over yes/no questions as they will allow you to dig more into the user’s experience, goals, need and preferences.

3. Prepare follow-up questions & anticipate silences

If you follow step two, you’re likely to get a variety of responses. This is a good thing! Some participants will take time to really explain how and why they use different products or features, while others may provide vague answers. Anticipate different responses and behavior to your specific questions and prepare a few follow-up questions to address both scenarios.

Similarly, be ready for the awkward pauses. Take your time, take notes and thinking about the next question you’d like to ask. While it may be tempting to fill these silences with small-talk, you’ll be surprised how often the user will fill the silences with more info about the previous question you asked.

What’s next after conducting user interviews?

The next natural step after conducting user interviews is to synthesize all findings, neatly document them, and circulate this resource effectively with team members that can utilize them in their process.

UX designers can jump right into working on Empathy Maps, and Affinity Diagrams. Then, develop User Personas, and Customer Journey Maps, based on the observations obtained during these interviews.

For Product Managers it’s always good to have a quick Kanban Board handy to jot down immediate to-do’s like product bug fixes, or new feature ideas.

Strategist, Branding, and Marketing Teams can also tap into these insights to develop their versions of User Personas, and revisit the Brand Positioning Canvas.

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