User interviews are a powerful way to learn more about your customers. User interviews should be exercised by the whole product team regularly. That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody needs to run the interviews, but at least participate in the observation.

General Preparation

• Clarify recruiting criteria for interviewees and goal for the interview.
• Prepare your interview guideline.
• Clarify roles for interviewing and taking notes (you can't do both with reasonable quality).
• Prepare "location" to gather input from observations. Whether it's a physical wall or Mural/Realtime Board for remote interviews.
• I like to segment the feedback area according to the interview guideline so that notes can be put in the right context right away.
• If applicable: Double-check the prototype and get an explanation on potential quirks from the designer working on it.
• For remote Interviews: Pause background sync for cloud services and disable potential incoming notifications.
• Remind observers to not judge but to only state observations.

Crafting the Interview Guideline

• Include even seemingly apparent things like asking for consent to record
• My favorite introduction phrases
  • "Nobody from us worked on the prototype, so you can't hurt our feelings with direct feedback on what's not working."
  • "The prototype is in an early state. So, if you encounter something which doesn't work, that's not because of you, but because we haven't done our job."
• Only uses open questions and avoid yes/no questions as much as possible.
• Don't use leading or hypothetical questions.

Running the Interview

• Treat the guideline as help and don't try to hold on to the structure religiously. Be prepared to jump and scratch questions which don't make sense anymore.