User Interview
A structured one-on-one conversation with a user, customer, or stakeholder designed to surface needs, behaviours, mental models, and pain points that cannot be discovered through analytics or surveys alone. The core technique of human-centred design — you cannot design for humans you haven't talked to.
How to run it
- 1
Define your research question: What do you need to learn? (Not 'does this feature test well?' — that's validation. User interviews are for discovery.)
- 2
Recruit 5-8 participants from your target user group. 5 interviews reveal 85% of usability issues.
- 3
Write an interview guide: 5-8 open-ended questions, ordered from general to specific. Start with context (tell me about your day/work), not the product.
- 4
Conduct interviews in pairs when possible: one facilitator, one note-taker.
- 5
Ask 'why' multiple times. Dig behind the first answer — it's rarely the real one.
- 6
Never ask leading questions. Not: 'Do you find X frustrating?' Ask: 'Walk me through what happens when you try to do X.'
- 7
After each interview, capture key insights while fresh (within 1 hour).
- 8
After all interviews, use Affinity Mapping to cluster insights across participants.
Tips
Silence is your friend. After an answer, wait 3-5 seconds. The best insights often come after the pause.
Ask about past behaviour, not hypothetical future behaviour. 'Tell me about the last time...' not 'Would you ever...'
Never show your product in a discovery interview — it primes their answers.
5 interviews with the right people beat 50 survey responses from the wrong people.
Variations
Contextual Inquiry: observe users in their actual environment while they work (more insight than a meeting room). Guerrilla Research: 5-minute corridor interviews with whoever's available — lower quality but faster.
Where it fits
Related methods
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