One of the most commonly employed methods in user experience (UX) research is the user interview. These personal sessions are a great way to gain insight into what users think of a product and watch what they actually do with it.
What is a User Interview?
User interviews are one-on-one sessions where a user is invited to talk about their experience with a product. Interviews produce qualitative, self-reported data, and contextual interviews, interviews conducted during or after observations of the user with the product, can give a UX Researcher insight into how users talk about the product or experience compared to what they actually do with it.
When to Conduct User Interviews
User interviews are a useful tool throughout the user-centered design process. At the beginning of a project, interviews help you find out more about users and what their goals and pain points are. This gives you information to use in creating personas, scenarios, and journey maps. During the design process, interviews can provide user opinions on the developing design, and interviews during the testing phase can help gauge how the product is working.
How to Conduct an Interview
There are several steps to running successful interviews. You need to make a plan, find participants, determine a location, write effective questions, and finally conduct the interview.
Determining Research Objectives
Before you begin to hold user interviews, you need to decide what you want to learn from the users. You also need to determine what the stakeholders want to learn about the user experience. Having clear research goals will help throughout the process, especially when it comes to writing interview questions.
Recruiting Participants
Next, you will need to find subjects to interview. There may be an existing customer base that you can draw on, or you might want to recruit participants through social media. Users are often offered incentives for their participation in the form of money, gift cards, early access to features, or branded merchandise.
Finding a Location
Where you hold the interviews can have an effect on the results. If you are simply looking for user opinions, a neutral space is a good idea. Product or company branding in the room can introduce bias and affect responses. If you are looking at how users interact with the product, contextual interviews in the user’s “native environment”--be that home or work–will capture that information more accurately.
Writing Effective Questions
When it comes to interview questions, it’s a good idea to write open questions rather than closed ones. Closed questions elicit yes/no responses, which aren’t very useful for getting to a user’s beliefs. Open questions bring out more elaborate and detailed answers. Be sure to avoid leading questions, which include a clue to an answer. Prepare an opening statement to introduce yourself and tell the participant why you are doing the interview and ask if they have any questions. Be careful to avoid jargon when writing the interview questions. This can make users uncomfortable. Finally, prepare more questions than you think you will have time to ask. The last thing you want is a user sitting in silence. If you have allowed for hour-long interviews, it should take about ten minutes to read through your script without the participant answering.
Conducting the Interview
When the participant arrives, make them feel comfortable. Be on time and stay on target; it shows respect, although a bit of small talk can help to build rapport. Let users know that there are no wrong answers and that you are interested in their opinion. They are the experts and have the information, so let the users talk more than you do. It may sometimes be necessary to gently nudge them back toward the topic if they stray too far off. Ask follow-up questions when you need to, and don’t be afraid to interrupt if something interesting comes along that you want to explore further. Use active listening techniques, such as maintaining eye contact, nodding, and unobtrusive verbal feedback to show the participant you are interested in what they are saying, and at the end of the interview, be sure to thank the user for their time.
Recording the Interview
Use a notetaker so you can interact with the user more effectively. It is difficult to take notes and interact with the participant at the same time. Create a notetaking sheet to help the notetaker maintain consistent responses. This will make data analysis easier and give better results. Be sure to get the participant’s permission to make a recording.
Reporting the Results
The results of UX research are often presented to the design team and stakeholders are workshops and meetings. While a written report full of statistics is useful, more visual techniques can be a better way to give an overall impression of the results. Word clouds and mind maps are easy to generate and an interesting way to highlight the important portions of the results.
Drawbacks of Interviews
While user interviews can provide valuable insight into how people think and feel about a product, there are some drawbacks. People often say they do one thing and do something else when they actually use the product. People’s memories are fallible and if they can’t remember something, they will often fill in for things they’ve forgotten. You can sometimes get around this with a larger sample size, but that can be expensive.
Where to Learn UX Design
If you would like to learn more about UX design and research in order to switch to a new career, one of the best ways to do that is to sign up for classes. You can choose classes that meet in-person or online to learn design software and other applications. Some people prefer to attend brick-and-mortar sessions when learning new information, but that isn’t always available. Live online classes have a similar set-up with a real-time, remote instructor who can answer questions and take control of your monitor—with permission—to show you how to do things. Training is part or full-time and available weekdays, weeknights, or weekends.
The best way to prepare for a career shift to a field like UX design is to enroll in a bootcamp or certificate program. These are intensive training courses that run from a few weeks to a few months and another plus of training is that you will leave class with a professional-quality portfolio that you can show to prospective employers.
It’s easy to learn UX design and start a new career. Check out Noble Desktop’s UX design classes. Choose between in-person sessions in NYC at Noble’s location or sign up for live online UX design courses and attend from anywhere. Use Noble Desktop’s Classes Near Me to find other UX design bootcamps in your area.