user research interview guide

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Writing an Effective Guide for a UX Interview

February 28, 2021 2021-02-28

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In This Article:

Introduction, step 1: write your research questions, step 2: brainstorm interview questions, step 3: broaden your questions, step 4: fill in for unaccounted research questions, step 5: arrange your questions, step 6: prepare additional probing and followup questions, step 7: pilot your guide.

In the discovery phase of product development, user interviews are often used to capture important information about users: their backgrounds, beliefs, motivations, desires, or needs. Typically, the interviews carried out at this stage are semistructured (referred to as “depth interviews” by market researchers) — they generally have a predefined structure, but also allow the interviewer the flexibility to follow up on significant statements made by participants.

In a semistructured interview, the interviewer uses an interview guide (also referred to as a discussion guide). Unlike an interview script — which is used in structured interviews — an interview guide can be used flexibly: interviewers can ask questions in any order they see fit, omit questions, or ask questions that are not in the guide.

A good interview guide paves the way for a deep, free-flowing conversation with participants. (Obviously, the way you conduct the interview will also be important, but that’s another article!) Interview guides should include a few concise, open-ended questions to encourage participants to tell their stories. These will be followed by carefully crafted, probing questions to uncover motivations or beliefs behind certain reported behaviors or utterances.

Constructing a good interview guide can be tricky and time-consuming. It’s not uncommon to spend a full day crafting one. However, it’s important to have one to ensure you get the most out of your interviews. Without an interview guide you run the risk of:

• Asking leading questions as you try to think of questions on the spot
• Not covering topics relevant to your research questions in each interview

Ultimately, without an interview guide, you are in danger of compromising the validity of your data. Here are some steps meant to help you create an interview guide if you’re new to this practice.

Sometimes the research questions are clear and obvious. However, sometimes they’re not. Maybe you’ve realized you need to speak to users because you don’t know anything about them. Good! But what do you want to find out from them? These are your research questions. Write these out first before working on your interview guide, as they will shape your interview questions. Below are some examples of research questions:

• What are users’ expectations in this situation?
• How do users make a decision in this situation?
• How have users managed to solve this problem in the past?
• What aspects of this product do users care most about, and why?

Next, note down all interview questions that come to mind. It doesn’t matter whether they are good or poor — you’ll deal with that later. You can use mind maps , digital whiteboards, or a simple list — whatever works for you! Sometimes, further research questions pop up here. That’s fine; add them to your list of research questions.

It’s typical after step 2 to have a long list of mostly closed questions. Those kinds of questions wouldn’t make for a good interview because they won’t allow for unanticipated stories and statements to emerge and can limit your ability to build rapport with the participant. (Rapport is important if you’re looking to gather accurate, in-depth information from your participants.)

Review your list of questions and ask yourself, for each interview question, is there a broader, more open-ended version of that question that you can ask instead?

For example, consider the following closed questions that could be asked in an interview with an employee.

• Do you work in an office?
• Is the work mostly desk-based or paper-based?
• Do you have to attend meetings during the workday?
• Do you work in a team?

The above questions could be answered by asking the participant to describe a typical day at work. It’s likely that in doing so, the participant may cover all or many of the above. If the participant has not covered everything, then some of these can be asked as follow-up questions.

Example questions, that prompt the user to recall a certain event and are similar to those used in the critical-incident method , are excellent for gathering stories and unanticipated statements. For instance, imagine you’re conducting an interview to learn about people’s experiences cooking at home. The following example questions provide the opportunity for participants to tell many different stories and give you a glimpse into their lives.

• Tell me about the last time you cooked at home.
• Tell me about a time where you cooked something new.
• Tell me about a time when you cooked something that turned out well.
• Tell me about a time when you cooked something that didn’t turn out as you hoped.
• Tell me about a time when you were thinking about cooking something but decided to get takeout instead?

Align each interview question to your research questions. If you have research questions that are not addressed by any of your interview questions, fill in the gap by crafting some more interview questions. Repeat step 3 if needed.

The interview guide can include your research questions. Some researchers like to remind themselves of the aims of the research by displaying these either at the top of the guide or alongside the interview questions.

To make the conversation flow in a logical order and seem natural think about the best order for your questions . For example, if you’re talking about an experience people have had, it makes sense to move in a chronological order. If the experience has set phases (such as discover , choose , purchas e, use , review ) that you might have documented in a user-journey map , service blueprint , or experience map then you may want to align your questions to these phases. That’s not to say you can’t depart from this order in the interview if you need to!

You should also think about preparing some warmup questions that are open-ended and easy to answer to build rapport at the beginning of your interview. For example, “Tell me a little about yourself” is a typical opening question which gets the participant talking. Any questions that require reflection should be featured later in your guide; introducing them too early could be overwhelming and you might get stereotypical responses, as participants haven’t had a chance to recall events, feelings, and form judgments.

Once you’ve ordered your questions, go through each one and prepare followup questions meant to provide you with additional detail and clarification , such as “Where were you when this happened?”, “When did that happen?”, “Tell me why you did that?”, and so on.

You can include probing questions , too, to help you to remember to ask them — for example, “Tell me more about that”, “Tell me why you felt that way”, “Why is that important to you?”

Piloting your guide will give you an idea of:

• Questions you should ask but aren’t yet included in your guide
• Questions that need rewording
• Whether the question order works
• Whether you will have time for all your questions

Recruit a pilot participant and give yourself enough time to make some changes. It’s okay to make updates to your guide throughout your interviews, but the point of piloting your guide is to fix any glaring issues before commencing research.

A guide will provide focus to your interviews and ensure that they are successful. Your interview guide should consist of broad, open-ended questions that allow participants to tell you about their experience in detail. These questions will be accompanied by many probing and followup questions, used to capture further details and gain clarification. You can download an example of an interview guide to refer to as you create your own interview guides.

Example Interview Guide (PDF)

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How to conduct effective user interviews for UX research

User interviews are a popular UX research technique, providing valuable insight into how your users think and feel. Learn about the different types of user interviews and how to conduct your own in this guide.

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User interviews are a popular UX research technique, providing valuable insight into how your users think and feel. Learn about the different types of user interviews and how to conduct your own in this guide. 

User research is fundamental for good UX. It helps you get to know your users and design products that meet their needs and solve their pain-points. 

One of the most popular UX research methods is user interviews. With this technique, you get to hear from your users first-hand, learning about their needs, goals, expectations, and frustrations—anything they think and feel in relation to the problem space.

But when should you conduct user interviews and how do you make sure they yield valuable results?

Follow this guide and you’ll be a user interview pro. We explain:

What are user interviews in UX research?

What are the different types of user interviews, when should you conduct user interviews, what data and insights do you get from user interviews, how to conduct effective user interviews for ux research: a step-by-step guide.

• What happens next? How to analyse your user interview data

First things first: What are user interviews?

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Interviews are one of the most popular UX research methods. They provide valuable insight into how your users think, feel, and talk about a particular topic or scenario—allowing you to paint a rich and detailed picture of their needs and goals. 

interviews take place on a one-to-one basis, with a UX designer or UX researcher asking the user questions and recording their answers. They can last anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour, and they can be done at various stages of a UX design project. 

There are several different types of user interviews. They can be:

• Structured, semi-structured, or unstructured
• Generative, contextual, or continuous
• Remote or in-person

Let’s explore these in more detail.

Structured vs. semi-structured vs. unstructured user interviews

Structured interviews follow a set list of questions in a set order. The questions are usually closed—i.e. there’s a limit to how participants can respond (e.g. “Yes” or “No”). Structured interviews ensure that all research participants get exactly the same questions, and are most appropriate when you already have a good understanding of the topic/area you’re researching. 

Structured interviews also make it easier to compare the data gathered from each interview. However, a disadvantage is that they are rather restrictive; they don’t invite much elaboration or nuance. 

Semi-structured interviews are based on an interview guide rather than a full script, providing some pre-written questions. These tend to be open-ended questions, allowing the user to answer freely. The interviewer will then ask follow-up questions to gain a deeper understanding of the user’s answers. Semi-structured interviews are great for eliciting rich user insights—but, without a set script of questions, there’s a high risk of researcher bias (for example, asking questions that unintentionally lead the participant in a certain direction). 

Unstructured user interviews are completely unscripted. It’s up to the interviewer to come up with questions on the spot, based on the user’s previous answers. These are some of the trickiest types of user interviews—you’re under pressure to think fast while avoiding questions that might bias the user’s answer. Still, if done well, unstructured interviews are great if you have very little knowledge or data about the domain and want to explore it openly. 

Generative vs. contextual vs. continuous user interviews

Generative user interviews are ideal for early-stage exploration and discovery. They help you to uncover what you don’t know—in other words, what insights are you missing? What user problem should you be trying to solve? Which areas and topics can you identify for further user research? Generative interviews are usually unstructured or semi-structured. 

Contextual user interviews take place in a specific context—while the user is carrying out a certain task, for example. This allows you to not only observe the user’s actions/behaviour first-hand, but also to ask questions and learn more about why the user takes certain actions and how they feel in the process. Contextual interviews tend to be semi-structured. 

Continuous user interviews are conducted as part of continuous UX research. While traditional user research is done within the scope of a specific project, continuous UX research is ongoing, conducted at regular interviews (e.g. weekly or monthly) with the goal of continuous product improvement. Continuous interviews are like regular check-ins with your users, giving you ongoing insight into their needs, goals, and pain-points. 

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Remote vs. in-person user interviews

A final distinction to make is between remote and in-person interviews. 

In-person user interviews take place with the user and researcher in the same room. A big advantage of in-person interviews is that you’re privy to the user’s body language—an additional insight into how they feel. 

Remote user interviews take place via video call. Like any kind of remote work, they’re more flexible and may be more accessible for research participants as they don’t require any travel. 

User interviews provide value at various stages of a design project. You can use them for:

• Discovery and ideation —when you want to learn more about your target users and the problems they need you to solve.
• UX testing and product improvement —when you want to get user feedback on an existing design concept or solution.
• Continuous UX research —you can run regular interviews as part of a continuous UX research framework. 

Let’s take a closer look. 

User interviews for discovery and ideation

User interviews can be useful right at the beginning of a UX project, when you don’t know much (or anything) about the domain and don’t yet have a design direction. At this stage, everything is pretty open and your user interviews will be exploratory. 

Conducting user interviews early in the process will help you to answer questions such as “Who are our target users?”, “What problems do they need us to solve?” and “What are their goals and expectations in relation to the problem space?”

Here you’ll be focusing on generative user interviews (i.e. finding out what you don’t know), and they’ll likely be unstructured or semi-structured.

User interviews as part of UX testing and product improvement

User interviews also come in handy when you have an idea or concept you want to evaluate, or even a working product you want to test. 

At this stage, you might present the user with a prototype and ask them questions about it. If you’re further along in the design process, you can run user interviews as an add-on to UX testing —having the user interact with a working prototype (or the product itself) and asking them questions at the same time. These are the contextual interviews we described earlier. 

Conducting user interviews at this stage will help you gain insight into how your users feel about a concept/product/experience and to identify pain-points or usability issues within the existing design. 

User interviews as part of continuous UX research

User interviews are also valuable as part of a continuous UX research framework. Here, there is no project-specific goal—rather, you’re interviewing users regularly to gain ongoing user insights. This enables you to maintain a user-centric design process and to evolve your product continuously as you learn more about your users. 

You can learn more about the importance of continuous UX research here .

User interviews allow you to hear from the user, in their own words, how they think and feel about a particular problem space/experience/task. This provides rich insights into their thoughts, beliefs, experiences, problems, goals, desires, motivations, and expectations, as well as the rationale or thought process behind certain actions. 

As such, user interviews generate qualitative data . That is, data which tells you about a person’s thoughts, feelings, and subjective experiences. It’s the opposite of quantitative data which is objective, numerical, and measurable. You can learn more about the difference between quantitative and qualitative user research data here .

Note that user interviews generate self-reported data . Self-reported data is based on what the user chooses to share with you (you’re not observing it; rather, you’re hearing it from the user). It’s how they report to be feeling or thinking. 

If you conduct contextual user interviews, you’ll gather a mixture of observational data (based on what you observe the user doing) and self-reported data. 

After conducting user interviews, you’ll end up with lots of data in the form of interview transcripts, audio or video recordings, and your own notes. We’ll look at how to analyse your user interview data in the final section of this guide. 

First, though, here’s a step-by-step plan you can follow to conduct effective user interviews. 

Ready to conduct your own user interviews? Follow our step-by-step guide to get started.

• Determine what type of user interviews you’ll conduct
• Write your user interview script (or guide)
• Set up the necessary tools
• Recruit your interview participants
• Perfect your interview technique

Let’s walk through our plan step by step. 

1. Determine what type of user interviews you’ll conduct

Earlier in this guide, we outlined the different types of user interviews: Structured, semi-structured, and unstructured; generative, contextual, and continuous; and remote and in-person. 

The first step is to determine what format your user interviews will take. This depends on:

• What stage you’re at in the project/process
• What your research goals are

If you’re at the very early stages of a design project, you’ll likely want to keep your user interviews open and exploratory—opting for unstructured or semi-structured interviews. 

Perhaps you’ve already got a design underway and want to interview your users as they interact with it. In that case, structured or semi-structured contextual interviews may work best. 

Consider what you want to learn from your user interviews and go from there. 

2. Write your user interview script (or guide)

How you approach this step will depend on whether you’re conducting structured, semi-structured, or unstructured user interviews.

For structured interviews, you’ll need to write a full interview script—paying attention to the order of the questions. The script should also incorporate follow-up questions; you won’t have the freedom to improvise or ask additional questions outside of your script, so make sure you’re covering all possible ground. 

For semi-structured interviews, you’ll write an interview guide rather than a rigid script. Come up with a set list of questions you definitely want to ask and use these—and your users’ answers—as a springboard for follow-up questions during the interview itself. 

For unstructured user interviews, you can go in without a script. However, it’s useful to at least brainstorm some questions you might ask to get the interview started. 

Regardless of whether you’re conducting structured, semi-structured, or unstructured interviews, it’s essential that your questions are:

• Open-ended . These are questions that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. They require more elaboration from the user, providing you with much more insightful answers. An example of an open question could be “Can you tell me about your experience of using mobile apps to book train tickets?” versus a closed question such as “Have you ever used a mobile app to book train tickets?”
• Unbiased and non-leading . You want to be very careful about how you word your questions. It’s important that you don’t unintentionally lead the user or bias their answer in any way. For example, if you ask “How often do you practise app-based meditation?”, you’re assuming that the user practises meditation at all. A better question would be “What are your thoughts on app-based meditation?” 

It’s worth having someone else check your questions before you use them in a user interview. This will help you to remove any unintentionally biased or leading questions which may compromise the quality of your research data. 

3. Recruit your interview participants

Your user interviews should involve people who represent your target users. This might be existing customers and/or representative users who fit the persona you would be designing for. 

Some common methods for recruiting user research participants include:

• Posting on social media
• Working with a dedicated agency or platform which will connect you with suitable participants
• Recruiting from your own customer or user database

The good thing about user interviews is that you don’t need loads of participants to gather valuable data. Focus on quality over quantity, recruiting between five and ten interviewees who closely match your target group. 

4. Set up the necessary tools

Now for the practical matter of getting your user interviews underway. If you’re conducting in-person user interviews, you’ll need to choose an appropriate setting—ideally somewhere quiet and neutral where the user will feel relaxed. 

For remote user interviews, you’ll need to set up the necessary software, such as Zoom , dscout , or Lookback . Consult this guide for more UX research tools . 

You’ll also need to consider how you’re going to record the user’s answers. Will you use good old fashioned pen and paper, a simple note-taking app, or a recording and transcription software? 

Make a list of all the tools you’ll need for a seamless user interview and get everything set up in advance. 

5. Perfect your interview technique

As the interviewer, you have an important role to play in ensuring the success of your user interviews. So what makes a good interviewer? Here are some tips to help you perfect your interview technique:

• Practise active listening . Show the user that you’re listening to them; maintain eye contact (try not to be too distracted with taking notes), let them speak without rushing, and don’t give any verbal or non-verbal cues that you’re judging their responses.
• Get comfortable with silence . In everyday conversations, it can be tempting to fill silences. But, in an interview situation, it’s important to lean into the power of the pause. Let the user think and speak when they’re ready—this is usually when you elicit the most interesting insights.
• Speak the user’s language . Communication is everything in user interviews. Don’t alienate the user by speaking “UX speak”—they may not be familiar with industry-specific terms, and this can add unnecessary friction to the experience. Keep it simple, conversational, and accessible.

Ultimately, the key is to put your users at ease and create a space where they can talk openly and honestly. Perfect your interview technique and you’ll find it much easier to build a rapport with your research participants and uncover valuable, candid insights. 

What happens next? How to analyse your user interview data 

You’ve conducted your user interviews. Now you’re left with lots of unstructured, unorganised qualitative data—i.e. reams of notes. So how do you turn all those interview answers into useful, actionable insights? 

The most common technique for analysing qualitative data is thematic analysis . This is where you read through all the data you’ve gathered (in this case, your notes and transcripts) and use ‘codes’ to denote different patterns that emerge across the dataset. 

You’ll then ‘code’ different excerpts within your interview notes and transcripts, eventually sorting the coded data into a group of overarching themes. 

At this stage, you can create an affinity diagram —writing all relevant findings and data points onto Post-it notes and ‘mapping’ them into topic clusters on a board. This is a great technique for physically working through your data and creating a visualisation of your themes, allowing you to step back and spot important patterns. 

With your research data organised and categorised, you can review your findings in relation to your original research objectives. What do the themes and patterns tell you? What actions can you take from your findings? What gaps still need to be filled with further UX research?

As a final step, you might write up a UX research report and present your findings to relevant stakeholders. 

Learn more about UX research

We hope you now have a clear understanding of what user interviews are, why they’re such a valuable UX research method, and how to conduct your own user interviews. If you’d like to learn more about user research, continue with these guides:

• A complete introduction to card sorting: What is it and how do you do it?
• What are UX personas and what are they used for?
• What’s the future of UX research? An interview with Mitchell Wakefield, User Researcher at NHS Digital
• user interviews
• ux research

Emily is a professional writer and content strategist with an MSc in Psychology. She has 8+ years of experience in the tech industry, with a focus on UX and design thinking. A regular contributor to top design publications, she also authored a chapter in The UX Careers Handbook . Emily also holds a BA in French and German and is passionate about languages and continuous learning.

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14 January 2025

User interviews: The complete guide for 2024

The key to creating successful products lies in truly understanding your users. User interviews stand at the forefront of this discovery process, offering a unique window into the minds and hearts of those who use your product. They help connect your team's vision with the real-world experiences of your users.

By engaging directly with your users, you unlock qualitative insights — learning about their needs, frustrations, and interactions with your product. This comprehensive guide delves deeper into user interviews, equipping you with the tools and knowledge to harness the power of direct user feedback.

What is a user interview?

A user interview is a qualitative research method where the researcher (the moderator) asks a potential or existing user (the participant) guided questions to understand how they interact with a product or service. It involves conducting in-depth discussions with users to gather insights about their experiences, opinions, attitudes, needs, and behaviors related to a specific product, service, or concept. You can apply user interviews to various scenarios, like evaluating the effectiveness of a website, understanding customer perceptions of a product, or assessing the impact of a service.  

The purpose of interviewing your users is to understand their perspective and the "why" behind their behavior so you can make informed decisions and build a better product.

It’s not just about what users do but also their motivations, challenges, and preferences. This qualitative approach offers detailed insights that quantitative data alone cannot provide, making user interviews a must-have method in any UX researcher's toolkit.

The process typically involves a one-on-one conversation between a researcher and a user. While a set of predetermined questions guides these discussions, they can be flexible enough to delve deeper into areas of interest as they arise. With the participant's consent, the researcher may record the interview to capture the conversation in-full, while also taking notes along the way.

User interviews help researchers, product managers, designers, engineers, and marketers identify and understand their users' pain points and needs. This understanding guides the creation of products that meet, and hopefully exceed, user expectations.

Companies like Canva, Figma, and Drift trust Great Question as their home for user interviews — from participant recruitment, scheduling, and incentives, to transcription, synthesis, and storage. Create a free Great Question account and start interviewing your users here.

User interviews vs. customer interviews: An important distinction

User interviews and customer interviews are often used interchangeably, and it's easy to see why.

Both user interviews and customer interviews help companies better understand how people interact with what they provide. Both help companies uncover key insights, make smarter decisions, and build better products and services. Both can be run remotely or in-person. There's a lot of overlap.

But there are a few important, albeit slight, differences between the two that are worth keeping in mind. While user interviews are centered on the experience and usability of a product or service, customer interviews revolve around the broader relationship between the customer and the company.

Let's take a closer look:

User interviews

Focus : User interviews are primarily concerned with how individuals use a product or service. The focus is on the user experience (UX); think usability, functionality, and design.

Participants : The participants in user interviews are actual users of the product or service, regardless of whether they are paying customers. They can include frequent users, occasional users, or even potential users who might use the product in the future. For instance, in B2B SaaS, the user might be someone who uses the app daily but doesn’t necessarily make purchasing decisions about the software.

Objective : The primary objective is to understand how the product or service fits into the user’s life, how they interact with it, and what improvements could enhance the user experience. It’s more about the interaction with the product and the overall experience than about sales or marketing considerations.

Customer interviews

Focus : Customer interviews delve into the customer's overall relationship or experience with the company and its brand. These interviews often extend beyond the usage of a specific product to encompass aspects like customer service, customer satisfaction , brand perception, purchasing decisions, and loyalty.

Participants : The focus here is on customers — individuals who have purchased or are considering purchasing a product or service. This group may include both active users and those who have stopped using the product. For example, with a fitness app, the participants might include current subscribers who regularly use the app, occasional users who have the app but use it infrequently, and former users who have canceled their subscriptions.

Objective : The main objective of customer interviews is to gather insights into why customers purchase a product, their satisfaction with the purchase process, their perception of the brand, and their loyalty and likelihood to make future purchases. These interviews are often used to inform marketing strategies, sales approaches, branding, and overall business development.

Benefits of user interviews

Let’s explore the key benefits that conducting user interviews can bring to your design and development process:

Gain an in-depth understanding of your users

User interviews can help you uncover the users' needs, preferences, pain points, and motivations. This level of detail is often unattainable through quantitative methods like surveys . You get to uncover the  behind users’ behaviors, giving you a clear insight into their thought processes and decision-making.

Identification of unmet needs

User interviews are particularly effective in identifying needs that users might not be consciously aware of. By engaging users in discussions about their experiences, you can unearth latent needs and desires, paving the way for innovative solutions that users might not have thought to ask for.

Enhanced product usability

Feedback gathered from user interviews is powerful for refining a product's usability. Users provide firsthand accounts of their interaction with the product, highlighting areas of confusion, difficulty, or dissatisfaction. This feedback enables your design team to make targeted improvements that enhance the overall user experience.

Testing of assumptions

In product development, assumptions about user behavior and preferences are inevitable. User interviews help test these assumptions, ensuring that product development is grounded in real data. This validation is crucial for minimizing the risks of misalignment between the product and its intended users.

Development of user personas & journey maps

Qualitative data from user interviews is key to developing accurate user personas and journey maps. These tools are vital for empathizing with your users and understanding their experiences throughout their interaction with a product or service. Personas and journey maps informed by user interview data are more realistic and useful for guiding your design decisions.

Limitations of user interviews

While user interviews are a powerful tool in your UX research arsenal, they come with certain limitations you should be aware of.

The discrepancy between stated intentions & actual behavior

One of the key challenges in user interviews is there’s often a gap between what people say they do and what they actually do. Even when interviews are contextual, they tend to capture declared intentions rather than actual behaviors. To mitigate this, techniques like the "5 whys" method can help you drill deeper and uncover more accurate insights about user behavior.

Flaws in human memory

Participants may struggle to recall details accurately and unconsciously fill in gaps in their memory to create a coherent story. This reconstructed narrative may not align with actual events. To counter this, consider asking the same question differently throughout the interview to spot inconsistencies and get closer to the true sequence of events.

Overlooked details

Often, interview participants may omit small details because they don't perceive them as significant. However, these minor details can be crucial for your project. It’s important to emphasize the importance of these details to your participants and persistently ask "why" to dig deeper into their actions and motivations.

Social desirability bias

Some participants may alter their responses to present themselves in a more favorable light. They might withhold certain information or portray their behavior as more socially acceptable than it actually is. Social desirability bias can skew the data you collect, painting a picture that’s more idealized than real.

Types of user interviews

There are several types of user interviews that you can employ depending on your research goals and the context of your project.

Structured interviews

In a structured interview, the moderator adheres to a strict script or set of questions. This type of interview is very organized and allows for easy comparison across different participants, since everyone is asked the same questions in the same order. Structured interviews are particularly useful when you need to gather specific information from a large number of people.

Semi-structured interviews

A semi-structured interview is more flexible. While you start with a set of predefined questions, the moderator has the freedom to deviate from the script based on the participant's responses. This type of interview is ideal when you need structured data but also want to explore unexpected topics or insights that arise during the conversation.

Unstructured interviews

An unstructured interview is loose and conversational in nature. There’s no fixed set of questions; a general topic or objective guides the interview. This format is best suited for exploratory research, where you aim to understand broad user attitudes, experiences, and motivations without the constraints of a predefined questionnaire.

Contextual interviews

Contextual interviews involve observing and interviewing users in their natural environment, where they use the product or service. This type of interview helps you understand how users interact with a product in real-world conditions, providing insights into their behaviors, challenges, and usage patterns.

Remote interviews

Remote interviews, conducted over the phone or using a video conferencing tool like Zoom, are useful when geographical constraints prevent face-to-face meetings. They can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. While they offer convenience and a broader reach, they may lack the depth of in-person interviews, especially in terms of observing non-verbal cues.

Need help getting started? Our library of free UX research templates is full of examples, from customer discovery , journey , and exit interviews , to stakeholder interviews and more.

How to conduct a user interview

When done correctly, user interviews can provide powerful insights that shape the direction of your product or service. Here's what the process looks like in practice:

Define your objectives

Start by clearly defining the objectives of your user interview.

What specific information are you seeking? How do you plan to use this information? And what happens if you don't find what you're looking for?

Are you exploring user needs, testing a new feature, or gathering feedback on an existing product? Clear objectives will guide your interview process, from drafting questions to analyzing responses.

Find the ideal participants

Select participants who represent your actual or potential user base. Diversity in your selection is key to gaining a broad perspective.

Consider factors like age, gender, occupation, and experience with your product. The number of participants depends on your resources and the depth of insights required, but generally, 5-7 users can provide substantial qualitative data.

Prep your interview questions

Draft a list of questions that align with your objectives. Start with open-ended questions to encourage detailed responses, and avoid leading questions that might prompt biased answers.

The goal is to understand the user's experience and perspective. Frame your questions accordingly.

Choose the right setting

Decide whether the interview will be in person, over the phone, or via video call. In-person interviews can be beneficial for observing body language and creating a more personal connection, while remote interviews offer convenience and flexibility.

Conduct the interview

During the interview, create a comfortable, open environment. At the start of an interview, it's common for some participants to feel uneasy, particularly if they are uncertain about what the process involves. Start easy by explaining the interview's objective, the nature of the questions you'll be asking, and how their responses will be used.

One of the best ways to build rapport is by asking open-ended warm-up questions that participants can easily answer. Listen actively and follow up with probing questions to further explore specific areas.

Remember to stay neutral and avoid expressing judgments or opinions that might influence the participant's responses.

Press record & take notes

Document the interview through notes and, with participant consent, audio and/or video recording. This will help in accurately capturing the responses so you can analyze them later. Pay attention to what is said and how it's said, including non-verbal cues in face-to-face settings.

Analyze & synthesize findings

After your interview is complete, review your notes and recordings to identify patterns, insights, and emerging themes. Look for commonalities and differences in responses, and see how these relate to your initial objectives.

Best user interview questions to ask

As a researcher, it's important to steer clear of directly asking users what they want. Chuck Liu, Head of User Research at Chime, notes that this approach can complicate user interviews and lead to misleading insights.

So, what should you ask instead? Here are some of the most common interview questions used today:

What are you trying to get done?

Start by understanding the user's objectives. This question helps you grasp the broader context of why they use your product or service. It reveals their goals and what they hope to achieve, providing a foundation for the rest of the conversation.

How do you currently do this?

By asking users to describe how they currently accomplish their tasks, you gain insight into their workflow. This helps you understand their methods, the tools they use, and how your product fits into their routine.

What could be better about the way you do this?

This question is key to identifying pain points and areas for improvement. It encourages users to reflect on their challenges and what aspects could be enhanced.

Rather than asking them to propose solutions, you're prompting them to identify what isn't working well, which can lead to valuable insights for innovation.

How to recruit user interview participants

Here's how you can effectively recruit user interview participants:

Define your target audience

Start by clearly defining who your ideal user is. Consider factors such as demographics, behavior patterns, product usage, and other criteria relevant to your product. This clarity helps in identifying the right participants who can offer meaningful insights.

Tap into various recruitment channels

Recruitment channels can include social media, forums related to your product, email lists, and even your company's customer database. You can also use recruitment services or platforms that specialize in finding research participants.

Screen candidates before selecting participants

Once you have a pool of potential participants, screen them to ensure they fit your target profile. You can use short surveys or calls that include screening questions to filter out candidates who don't match your target user profile.

Offer appropriate incentives

Providing incentives can significantly increase participation rates. The incentives could be gift cards, discounts on your products, or even direct compensation. Ensure the incentive is appealing enough to encourage participation while staying within your budget.

Schedule interviews respectfully

Be considerate of participants' time when scheduling interviews. Offer multiple time slots and be flexible. Clear communication regarding the time, medium (in-person, phone, video call), and interview duration is important.

After the initial contact, follow up with participants to confirm their participation and remind them of the interview schedule. Following up reduces no-shows and ensures a smooth process.

Use the right tool

To manage all of the above, consider a UX research platform. With Great Question, you bring your own users or recruit from a panel of more than three million vetted participants in over 150 countries. From there, you can manage every step of the user interview process in one place: scheduling, incentives, transcription, storage, you name it.

When recruiting participants for user interviews, you have two primary options: bringing your own users as research participants or recruiting from an outside panel. Both have pros and cons to weigh.

Bring your own participants

Bringing your own participants, such as existing customers or users, offers the advantage of relevance. These participants are likely more familiar with your product, allowing for deeper, more specific insights. This approach can also be more cost-effective, as it often doesn’t require the additional fees associated with external recruitment services.

Moreover, recruiting your own users can build long-term relationships and facilitate ongoing feedback and user engagement. However, this method can be time-consuming and might introduce biases, as existing users may have preconceived notions about your product. Additionally, you might miss the fresh perspectives that new users or non-customers can offer.

Recruiting from an external panel

Recruiting participants from an external panel provides a diverse range of perspectives, thanks to the varied pool of people these panels offer. This method is generally faster and less labor-intensive, as the panel handles most of the recruitment process. Participants from external panels are less likely to have existing biases towards your product, potentially leading to more objective feedback.

The trade-off, however, includes higher costs due to service fees and possibly higher participant incentives. There's also the possibility that these participants may not represent your actual user base as accurately as your customers and might lack familiarity with your product.

Looking for participants? Recruit from a panel of 3M+ research participants.

How to analyze user interview data

Transcribe the interview.

Transcriptions provide a detailed, written record of the conversations, making it easier to analyze the content. You can transcribe interviews manually or with the help of transcription software. A tool like Great Question will automatically record and transcribe your user interviews, streamlining the process and ensuring you don't miss any crucial details.

Review & summarize key points

Review the transcriptions and your notes, highlighting key points, quotes, and themes. Summarize these findings for each interview. This step distills the large amount of data into manageable, focused snippets of information.

‍ Great Question uses AI to instantly summarize interviews, saving you time and helping you get your team up-to-speed faster.

Look for patterns & themes

Once you have the summaries, start looking for patterns, themes, and commonalities across different interviews. Are there recurring pain points, needs, or behaviors mentioned by multiple participants? Identifying these patterns is crucial for understanding broader user trends and sentiments.

Contextualize the data

Consider the context in which responses were given. Pay attention to nuances and non-verbal cues (if the interview was conducted in person or over video call). This helps in understanding the depth and emotion behind the responses.

Validate with quantitative data

If possible, corroborate your qualitative findings with quantitative data. This might mean looking at user behavior data, analytics, or survey results. Validation with quantitative data can strengthen your conclusions and provide a more comprehensive view.

Synthesize insights

Once you have identified themes and patterns, synthesize these into coherent insights. How do these findings relate to your research objectives? What do they tell you about your users' needs, behaviors, and preferences?

Brainstorm solutions & next steps

Use the insights to brainstorm potential solutions or next steps. How can you address the identified needs or pain points? This should be a collaborative effort involving team members from different disciplines to ensure diverse perspectives and innovative solutions.

Best practices for user interviews

Conducting user interviews effectively is essential for gathering valuable insights that can inform and improve your product or service. The following best practices will ensure that you conduct your user interviews like a pro :

• Clearly define the objectives of your interview
• Select participants who represent your target user base
• Develop an interview guide with questions that align with your research objectives
• Build rapport with participants
• Practice active listening
• Avoid leading questions that might bias the participant's responses
• Avoid asking people what they want
• Ask follow-up questions
• Ask similar questions from different angles
• Be punctual and respect the time constraints of the interview
• Make sure participants are aware of how their information will be used and ensure confidentiality
• Record the interview (with the participant’s consent) for accurate data capture
• Analyze and synthesize findings thoroughly

Best user interview tools

These user interview tools can streamline the research process and enhance the quality of your insights:

Great Question

At Great Question , user interviews are our bread-and-butter. Our platform streamlines the entire process from start to finish, connecting functions like participant recruitment, scheduling, and incentive distribution to keep your interviews running smoothly. Great Question automatically records and transcribes interviews through integrations with platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.

Great Question's advanced features for note-taking and organization, such as creating video highlights from transcripts and compiling them into reels, enhance the analysis and reporting process. Great Question's AI-driven capabilities automatically generate detailed interview summaries and key highlight suggestions based on your study goals.

User Interviews

User Interviews is a well-known tool for recruiting participants, offering access to a pool of over 3 million people from a wide range of professions. It allows for precise targeting based on job titles, skills, consumer behaviors, and product usage, ensuring you can quickly find and invite the most relevant segment for your study.

The tool streamlines the entire process by automating screening, scheduling, and incentive management, including handling Amazon gift card rewards for participants. It also provides features for screener surveys and participation tracking, making it easier to manage and conduct studies with external participants and your existing user base.

The bottom line

User interviews are a gateway to understanding the people who make your product a business. So, embrace the nuances of each interview, from preparing the right questions to choosing the best tools for a seamless process. Your attention to detail in recruiting diverse participants, preparing your interview guide, and analyzing responses thoughtfully will light the path to meaningful insights. Each step, from scheduling calls or synthesizing data, is one toward a product that resonates deeply with your users.

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Jack Wolstenholm

Jack is the Content Marketing Lead at Great Question, the end-to-end UX research platform for customer-centric teams. Previously, he led content marketing and strategy as the first hire at two insurtech startups, Breeze and LeverageRx. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

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