Conducting user interviews

Conducting User Interviews

Scope

Covers

• Planning an interview study that supports a specific product decision
• Recruiting the right participants (including early adopters when appropriate)
• Running interviews that capture specific stories and behaviors (not opinions)
• Synthesizing interviews into actionable insights, opportunities, and next steps
• Creating a lightweight “customer panel” habit for fast follow-ups

When to use

• “Create a discussion guide for discovery interviews.”
• “Recruit and run 8 user interviews about onboarding / activation.”
• “We need to understand why users switched (or churned) — run switch interviews.”
• “Help me synthesize interviews into insights + opportunities.”
• “I’m a PM and need to run customer conversations next week.”

When NOT to use

• You primarily need quantitative evidence or statistical confidence (use designing-surveys for surveys or an experiment/analytics workflow)
• You’re doing usability testing with task-based evaluation as the main output (use usability-testing — different protocol, different deliverables)
• You’re running hiring/candidate interviews (use conducting-interviews — different goals, rubrics, and legal considerations)
• You already have feedback data and need to synthesize existing evidence (use analyzing-user-feedback); this skill is for collecting new first-person stories
• You’re working with high-risk populations or sensitive topics (medical, legal, minors) without appropriate approvals/training
• You have no decision to support (you’ll produce anecdotes without impact)

Inputs

Minimum required

• Product + target user/customer segment (who, context of use)
• The decision the interviews should inform (e.g., positioning, onboarding redesign, roadmap bet)
• Interview type: discovery / JTBD switch / churn / concept test (or “recommend”)
• Target participants (role, behaviors, situation, recency) + “who NOT to interview”
• Constraints: number of interviews, time box, language/region, recording allowed, incentives (if any)

Missing-info strategy

• Ask up to 5 questions from references/INTAKE.md.
• If answers aren’t available, proceed with explicit assumptions and label unknowns.

Outputs (deliverables)

Produce a User Interview Pack in Markdown (in-chat; or as files if requested):

1. Context snapshot (goal, decision, hypotheses, constraints)
2. Recruiting plan (channels, outreach copy, scheduling logistics) + screener
3. Interview guide (script + question bank + probes) + consent/recording plan
4. Note-taking template + tagging scheme
5. Synthesis report (themes, evidence, opportunities, recommendations, confidence)
6. Follow-up plan (thank-you, keep-in-touch, “customer panel” list/cadence)
7. Risks / Open questions / Next steps (always included)

Templates: references/TEMPLATES.md

Workflow (8 steps)

1) Frame the decision and choose interview type

• Inputs: Context + references/INTAKE.md.
• Actions: Define the decision, what you need to learn (unknowns), and pick the interview type (discovery vs switch vs churn vs concept).
• Outputs: Context snapshot + study intent.
• Checks: You can answer: “What will we do differently after these interviews?”

2) Define participant criteria (who/when/why) and sampling plan

• Inputs: Target segment, product context, constraints.
• Actions: Specify inclusion/exclusion criteria; prioritize recency (recent switch/churn/attempt) when relevant; decide sample mix (e.g., 6 core + 2 edge cases).
• Outputs: Participant profile + sampling plan.
• Checks: Criteria are behavior/situation-based (not demographic proxies).

3) Create recruiting plan + screener + outreach copy

• Inputs: Participant profile; available channels (CRM, support, community, ads, LinkedIn).
• Actions: Draft outreach messages, a screener, and scheduling logistics. Expect high drop-off; plan volume accordingly.
• Outputs: Recruiting plan + screener + outreach copy.
• Checks: Screener screens for the story you need (recency, context, alternatives), not “interest in our product.”

4) Draft the interview guide (story-first)

• Inputs: Interview type + hypotheses/unknowns.
• Actions: Build a guide that elicits specific stories (“last time…”) and avoids leading questions. Include probes, pivots, and time boxes. Add consent/recording script.
• Outputs: Interview guide + consent/recording plan.
• Checks: At least 70% of questions ask about past behavior and concrete examples.

5) Run interviews + capture clean notes (PM/Design present)

• Inputs: Guide, logistics, notes template.
• Actions: Run the session, follow the story, and capture verbatims. If possible, have PM + design observe live (or listen to recordings) to avoid secondhand dilution.
• Outputs: Completed notes per interview + key quotes + immediate highlights.
• Checks: Each interview yields 2–5 “story moments” (trigger → struggle → workaround → outcome).

6) Debrief immediately and normalize evidence

• Inputs: Interview notes, recordings/transcripts (if any).
• Actions: Do a 10–15 min debrief right after each interview: surprises, hypotheses updates, follow-ups. Tag notes consistently.
• Outputs: Debrief bullets + tagged notes.
• Checks: Unclear claims are marked as “needs follow-up” instead of treated as facts.

7) Synthesize across interviews into themes and opportunities

• Inputs: Tagged notes across interviews.
• Actions: Cluster by outcomes/struggles; capture contradictions; quantify lightly (counts) without over-claiming. Translate insights into opportunities and recommendations with confidence levels.
• Outputs: Synthesis report + opportunity list.
• Checks: Every major insight has at least 2 supporting interviews (or is labeled “single anecdote”).

8) Share, decide, follow up, and run the quality gate

• Inputs: Draft pack.
• Actions: Produce a shareable readout, propose next steps, and create a lightweight customer panel habit (5–10 engaged users). Run references/CHECKLISTS.md and score with references/RUBRIC.md.
• Outputs: Final User Interview Pack + Risks/Open questions/Next steps.
• Checks: Stakeholders can restate (a) key learning, (b) decision implication, (c) what happens next.

Quality gate (required)

• Use references/CHECKLISTS.md and references/RUBRIC.md.
• Always include: Risks, Open questions, Next steps.

Anti-patterns (common failure modes)

1. Feature-wish-list interviews — Asking “What features do you want?” produces unreliable wishlists. Instead, elicit specific past stories (“Last time you tried to…”) and infer needs from behavior.
2. Leading questions / confirmation bias — Framing questions that nudge toward a desired answer (“Don’t you think X is a problem?”). Every question should be neutral and open-ended.
3. Convenience sampling — Interviewing whoever is available (internal colleagues, power users who volunteer) instead of recruiting participants who match the behavioral/recency criteria the study requires.
4. Synthesis-free interviews — Running all sessions but never synthesizing across them. Insights decay rapidly; debrief immediately and cluster themes before moving on.
5. Secondhand dilution — Only the interviewer attends, then summarizes findings in a slide deck. PM + design should observe live or listen to recordings to preserve signal fidelity.

Examples

Example 1 (Discovery): “I’m redesigning onboarding for a B2B product. Create a recruiting plan + discussion guide for 8 discovery interviews with new trial users.” Expected: participant criteria, outreach + screener, discovery guide, notes template, synthesis plan, and a ready-to-run pack.

Example 2 (Switch/JTBD): “We lose deals to spreadsheets. Run switch interviews to learn what triggers teams to move off spreadsheets and what they try instead.” Expected: switch interview guide (timeline + forces), recruiting criteria emphasizing recency, and a synthesis structure that outputs ‘push/pull/anxieties/habits’.

Boundary example (redirect to usability-testing): “We have a prototype and need to watch users complete tasks to find friction points.” Response: redirect to usability-testing; this skill focuses on open-ended story elicitation, not task-based evaluation with success criteria.

Boundary example (redirect to conducting-interviews): “Help me create an interview guide for hiring a senior PM.” Response: redirect to conducting-interviews; this skill covers user/customer research interviews, not hiring/candidate evaluation.

Boundary example (anti-pattern): “Ask users what features they want and build whatever they say.” Response: redirect to story-based interviewing; clarify decision context; avoid feature-request interviews without behavioral grounding.