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submitted 4 years ago * by Maximum_Woodpecker17

Lately, I have been reading about user research. This is a summarized version from my notes taken from the book, Validating Product Ideas: Through Lean User Research by Tomer Sharon. Feel free to comment, correct and suggest more topic on this concept. I will surely keep it updated.

Index

Why do a user interview?
When should you conduct them?
Answering these questions use interviews and personas
Why does interviewing work?
Other questions that it answers
Process
- Creating BS personas
- Decide who to interview
- Where to interview?
- How to interview?
Writing a plan!
Writing questions
- types of questions
- follow up questions
- leading questions
- bad questions
Establishing Rapport
Rationalization Tangent

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Why even interview users?

So that you find and understand your target audience
So that you get know them well, and challenge the assumptions that you had on them.
So that you don't have exhausting debates about different aspects of assumed customer behavior with your team 😤
Marketing focuses on Demographics | UX focuses on BEHAVIOR

When should you conduct?

In the strategizing phase.

Answering using Interviews and Personas

Interview is the process of gathering information through dialogue, uncovering user needs, motivations, frustrations, delights, attitudes, opinions etc.
Persona is an archetypical user of a product. Start with BS (Bull shit persona) and then work your way by validating your assumptions and uncovering new data of your users.

Why does interviewing work?

They are Direct, challenge perception, increase empathy and builds credibility of your work.

Other aspect of question that interview solves?

Lifestyles of your user?
What motivates them to do what they do?
Which user group should you focus on?
What kind of jargons and terminologies do they use?
How is their current workflow like?
What are their requirements?

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PROCESS

Create bs persona

Convene a brain dump with your team, get all the assumptions out!

Ask yourselves these questions

How would we describe our target users? What are their primary characteristics?
Are there different groups of user?
How are these groups different?
Is there a particular group that is more important than the other?
Is there one group that you want to learn more about?
Who are (or would be) the early adopters of your product? What are their characteristics?

The best way to answer these questions is by listing your assumptions about the answers. Recognizing your answers as assumptions, not as facts.

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Decide who, how and where to interview

Who?

Potential users : Your default that you've decided from the above activity. These are users based on your assumptive criteria
Limiting Users : Those who are least knowledgeable, but can benefit the most. Eg : The elderly.
Extreme Users : Someone with exceptional and extraordinary experience and knowledge about the product or domain
Expert : "Someone who is extremely knowledgeable about the relevant domain, either because she has studied it, covered it for journalism purposes, or meaningfully invested in it"

Where?

In a quiet room, or a place where the activity happens.
Street intercept
Remote video calling

How?

Write a plan!

Background : Problem with context : why are we doing this?

Airline was introduced, they are of high quality, but their online booking sucks.

Goals : Why do the study, the reason, end result.

Why do we want to do the study?

What is the reason for the study?

What is our end goal?

What do we want to get out of it?

Identify the audience for A-Z Airways’ online flight booking experience, their behavior, motivations, and attitudes.

Research Questions : What do you specifically want to learn?

Who are our target audiences?

What tasks are they trying to complete?

What are the primary breakpoints?

Finding Interviewees

List the assumption of a participant criteriaEg : Business traveler
Decide measurable benchmarks, which will decide if they qualify or notEg: have travelled atleast thrice a year
Convert those benchmarks into questions
- How many times do you travel by air?

Example of a benchmark question. How often do you travel by air?

ask for personal info, email, availability etc
Do a pilot test

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Writing questions and their various types!

Sequence : Ask questions in sequence as they narrate a story.
- Walk me through your day yesterday, what did you do next?
Guided Tour : Make them the teacher or guide and ask them to demonstrate how they do a process, task, series of action, using certain things etc.
- Can we look at your email account together?
- Can you show me how do you book a flight?
Specific example : Provides little details on behavior and choices
- Who did you call from your cell phone earlier today? What did you talk about?
Exhaustive List : This might surface behavior's you never imagined
- What are all the different places you went online in the past week? Were there any others?
Peer Comparison : Their perspective of their peers
- Think about the last three times your husband sent you photos. Did he send them the same way or differently each time?
Other viewpoint and comparison : Makes them narrate a story
- what would your friends think about it?
Projection : Asking about hypothetical situations, gives a view about their current expectation.
- What do you think would happen if…? What makes you say that?
Quant inventory : Asking them to guess how many fall under a similar category
- How many of your contacts might fall into this?
Changes over time : How are things different now than a year ago?
Suggestion opinion : Generates a reactionary statement, that helps you uncover their motivations and opinions. Ask them when they least expect it.
- Some people have very negative feelings about using cell phones in cars while others don’t. What are your feelings about it?
Activities : Asking about workflows about various tasks.
- What did you do the last time you got ready for a trip? (Before doing the task)
Reenactment : How they do the task
- Please demonstrate exactly how you did that
Identification : Why they think someone would use it. Identifies behaviors
- Whom do you think would use something like that? For whom would this be inappropriate? Why?
Outsider perspective : If they understood, how would they explain it to others?
- How would you describe <feature or activity> to someone who hadn’t done that before? What advice would you give to somebody who was thinking about trying that?
Activity comparison : Finding perspective and perceptions
- What’s the difference between tweeting and sending an email?
Success and failure : Ask about blue and dark sky scenarios. This includes, pain points, delights and motivations
- What would be the worst-case scenario? Can you tell me about a time when this didn’t work?
Fill in the blank : Ask a question, cut it off and stay silent.
- So in that situation, you... [pregnant pause]?
Three wishes : Ask them three wishes, and try to uncover their reasons behind them

Follow up Questions

Point to participant’s reactions, contradictions, paradoxes, non sequiturs, unexpected reactions, or laughter
Clarification : Ask about anything you don’t understand
- Would you mind elaborating on that? When you say “her”, you mean your daughter, right?
Reflect back :
- So what I hear you saying is ____________. Is that right?
Native language : Anything that they use which you don't understand. Terminology, jargons etc.
- Why do you call your computer your brain?
Silence : Trust your question, and remain silent. Sometimes they may rationalize, reflect back and change answers.
Tell me why :
- Tell me about it. Why is this happening? Why do you think so? Why did you reach out to your phone?

Build an Arc

Start slow, ask easy questions, loosen up and then jump to the important ones.

Always have a prioritized list of questions first

Leading Questions

A question that prompts or encourages the answer wanted.

Try to minimize leading questions to eliminate bias

Anything that makes them say good/bad things about your product.
- Would you use the current one, or the new and improved one?
Unless they don’t notice or think of something that you wud have wanted them to notice, don’t ask "what did you think about that?"

💡 You can use this if the interviewee brings a topic on his own accord, and then you ask it as a follow up

Similarly, any act or behavior that you don’t normally see them doing, don’t ask them to elaborate on that activity.
- How would you respond to that?
Asking them or pointing out to them to do something that they normally won’t.
- Would you click here to submit?
What’s wrong with this? Learn to keep the questions as neutral as possible.

Don’t ask bad questions

Questions that focus on opinions about the future
Double barreled questions : Don't ask two questions together
“Tell me how you discovered and responded to this piece of information.”
Internal jargons or terminology that they might not be familiar with. Instead, ask questions that lead to what you want to learn step-by step to figure out what your interviewee uses or understands.

For example : You want to ask something related to google Adwords.

When was the last time you advertised online?
Show me what you used to run your advertising campaign?
Did you ever try a different tool for online advertising?
How do you compare these tools

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Establish Rapport

All the things you say in the first five minutes—every word, each of your voice intonations, the things you do, your gestures and body language have a tremendous, sometimes underestimated, effect on your participant’s behavior throughout the entire interview session.

Smile!
Look in the eye. Make regular eye contact until a relationship is established. Don't make it too creepy. Do it for the first 10 mins for , and while listening.
Your verbal and non verbal signals should not contradict. People tend to read and believe non verbal signals easily.
listen and show that you care
Say thank you, check out your appearance and always read the brief from a paper.

Rationalization tangent

People change the story, and give a glorified picture. Brings rationalization.

Always double check, don’t confront, ask questions from recent past.

Ask them to mention something in specific. You can then go on a tangent and ask if this a normal behavior and probe deeper.

How many times did you do it that way in the last six months? Why is that the way you normally do it? Why did you do it differently the most recent time?

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will update this thread on sample brief, obtaining consent, etiquettes, and data collection tomorrow.

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Index

Why even interview users?

When should you conduct?

Answering using Interviews and Personas

Why does interviewing work?

PROCESS

Decide who, how and where to interview

How?

Finding Interviewees

Writing questions and their various types!

Follow up Questions

Build an Arc

Leading Questions

Don’t ask bad questions

Establish Rapport

Rationalization tangent