How to write user (customer) interview questions.

Guide

Tips to grow your business from a User Experience (UX) Researcher

One on one interviews are a powerful qualitative research approach that helps business owners:

• Uncover the needs of customers
• Refine marketing messages
• Uncover ideas for improvements or extension of a product
• Gain perspective on how a product fits into a customer’s lifestyle
• Explore individual differences between participants’ experiences and outcomes

Qualitative interviewing is not as useful for:

• Evaluating common outcomes for all users
• Measuring specific, predetermined effects of a product on a user
• Deciding whether your intervention caused changes or effects in participants

The point of a qualitative interview is to let the respondent tell their own story on their own terms. THIS IS NOT A SURVEY! The interview guide, that we will develop below, acts as a prompt, reminding you of necessary topics to cover, questions to ask and areas to probe.

Tips!
Try to record the interview as it allows for more thorough examination of what people say. There are some drawbacks to recording an interview as it may impact the responses you receive so be aware of the pros and cons.

Interviewer Tips
In order to prepare for an interview it’s good to know what makes a successful interviewer. A good interviewer is:

• Knowledgeable: about the topic at hand and is thoroughly familiar with the focus of the interview
• Structure: details the objectives for interview and helps to guide the interview
• Attentive: listens attentively to what is said and HOW it is said. They are empathetic and keen.
• Interpret: clarifies and extends meanings of interviewees’ statements, but without imposing meaning on them.

Developing the Interview Questions

I have worked in research for over five years and have written surely over 3000 interview questions for a variety of products and services and this always gives me reason to pause. Writing interview questions is more than just deciding what information you need. You want to make sure your questions avoid any major pitfalls and are balanced. Ensuring the interview questions are clear and easy to understand. And the most dreaded pitfall avoiding leading questions. Ensure you have a mixture of:

• Indirect vs direct questions
• Follow-up and Probing questions (following up with direct questions to learn more about something for e.g. what happened next?)
• Interpreting questions (To ensure clarity for e.g. Do you mean that the friend suggestion has changed from a more encouraging tool to a more directive one?)

Lets get to work!

Keeping the above in mind grab a paper and pen and follow these three steps to developing your interview guide. 1. Write down the larger research question of the study 2.Then outline the broad areas of knowledge that are relevant to answering these questions. 3. Finally, develop your questions. Not only do I manage the development of tech products but I run a wine club and will use examples from both my tech and business experience. Leggo!

First, the larger question
What role does [insert your product/service] the Vines Play wine club have in a member’s life?

Next, Determine what elements you want to study.
Here is a list of 6 elements you can study (this is not an exhaustive list so comment below other areas you also look into) I usually pick 1–3 for an in depth interview but if time and resource is an issue you may need to stretch and collect more data.
1.What influenced the purchasing/user decisions
2.What is the product, service or brand positioning
3.Strengths and weaknesses in products
4.Reactions to advertising or marketing campaigns
5.Usability of a website or other interactive services
6.Reactions to packaging and design

Third, draft your questions
In another article we will discuss analysis of the data. In qualitative assessment you will use a thematic approach to interpreting the data. Although this is not the time to be thinking about those themes, keep in mind when developing your research questions the human experience. Using Patton’s 6 types of questions related to Behavior or experience will provide a great framework for developing these questions. These questions ask for: opinion or belief, feelings, knowledge, sensory, background or demographic.

Here is a mini example of how this guideline helps to formulate questions. This is an example from a wound evaluation app. that I lead research on it’s clinical development.

• Opinion or belief- Would you say that’s (measuring a wound) the worst aspect of your job?
• Feelings- How did you feel when they first told you that you will be using this device ?
• Knowledge- Did you understand how to assess for undermining/tunneling on the app?
• Sensory- You mentioned when holding the phone while.. How do you adjust for that?
• Background or demographic- Do you think being a nurse affects how you use this product?

Show don’t tell!

An euphemism is script writing and also my approach for these articles. Using the three steps discussed above you should be able to create a great guide for your qualitative interviews. Below is an interview guide for my wine club with all the elements coming together .

1.What influenced the purchasing/user decisions
Here is a good place to collect some background information, some opinion and feelings
-What sparked your interest in wine?
-What made you decide to join a wine club?
-What do you think any wine club should offer its members?
-How do you feel about your wine club membership?

2.What is the product, service or brand positioning
Here is a good place to collect information on knowledge, sensory and opinions
-How would you describe Vines Play wine club to someone? [remember to add probes as you see fit.. anything else?]
-What are some of the features of the wine club? (avoid leading questions like…tell us some of the features you like most)
-How does insert feature make you feel when using it ?

3. Strengths and weaknesses in products
Here is a good place to collect information on knowledge, background and opinions
-Are there any features you would like to see added? [pay keen attention]
-Are there any differences between what you expected from the club and your experience?
[remember to clarify…When you said ____Did you mean ____]

4. Reactions to advertising or marketing campaigns
Here is a good place to collect information on opinions or belief
-What wine content do you most like to see online?
-What wine content do you find most useful from the Vines Play club? [probe, probe]

5. Reactions to usability of a website, packaging and design
Here is a good place to collect information on sensory
-You mentioned the wine packages …how does it feel when unboxing the package?
-What information about your membership do you get from the website?

To wrap up you can add an open ended question to serve as a catch all. This isn’t a widely loved technique but I’ve caught some incredible information by simply asking.. is there anything we haven’t discussed that you would like to share.