How to conduct user interviews

Conduct user interviews for social change with ease using these insights. Ensure your research is actionable and unbiased through our tips and tricks.

Interviewing users can provide you with insight in an instance. When done well, the information is powerful. When done wrong, you could go off course.

This section relates to in-person, online, and telephone, 1 on 1 interviews as opposed to focus groups or surveys.

The first step is to consider what you are trying to find out.

What are you trying to find out?

Refer back to your Table of Understanding from exercise 1, what questions arise that could be answered by speaking to humans? Which of these questions has the tag of blocker or important?

Filter these questions down, it is better to keep in-person interviews short and focussed, perhaps even working to answer just one pressing question.

In some cases you may not have a specific question you want answered, instead, you may be looking to develop a deeper understanding of how your user currently copes with the problem your product or service solves.