As a product manager starting out or early in your career, you are perhaps in the most exciting phase of your journey: the learning curve is steep, but the opportunities for impact are immense. Among the plethora of responsibilities that you juggle — feature prioritization, stakeholder management, and KPI tracking to name a few — one of the most essential yet often underrated is conducting effective user interviews.
Why is this skill so critical? Simply put, user interviews are your window into the minds and hearts of the very people who use, or will use, your product. Effective interviews can yield invaluable insights into user needs, pain points, and expectations.
So, how can you get the most out of these interviews? Today’s points gets you started and aims to walk you through the ins and outs of conducting effective user interviews.
Why Are User Interviews Important?
User interviews serve multiple purposes:
- Uncover Needs: They help you understand what users are looking for in a product.
- Identify Pain Points: They expose challenges users face, providing a focus for improvement.
- Prioritize Features: They enable you to determine which features are essential, nice-to-have, or unnecessary.
- Market Validation: They confirm whether your product or specific features resonate with your target audience.
Preparing for the Interview
Define Objectives
Start by clearly defining what you hope to achieve. Are you trying to understand why a feature is not being used as expected? Or are you trying to identify new opportunities for growth?
Create a Persona
Remember, you’re not just interviewing any users; you’re interviewing YOUR users. Understanding who your typical user is can help you ask questions that are both relevant and insightful.
Draft Questions
Prepare open-ended questions that encourage users to share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. Avoid questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” Especially avoid questions that lead people to answer a specific way; you’re looking to discover opportunities, not force a specific answer. Bias is not your friend in user interviews.
Recruit Participants
Identify individuals who are either current users of your product or belong to your target demographic. Incentives like gift cards can encourage participation.
Conducting the Interview
Build Rapport
Start by explaining the purpose of the interview and how their feedback will help improve the product. Make sure to establish a comfortable environment for them to share candidly.
Be a Good Listener
The most valuable insights often come from users’ narratives. Listen actively, nodding, and making eye contact to show that you are engaged.
Ask Follow-Up Questions
If a user says something interesting or unclear, dig deeper. Follow-up questions can often lead to the most valuable insights.
Capture Everything
Whether you’re recording the conversation (with permission) or taking extensive notes, make sure you capture as much as possible. You never know which off-hand comment may offer a groundbreaking revelation.
After the Interview
Analyze and Synthesize
Go through your notes or transcripts and look for recurring themes or particularly insightful comments. Try to understand not just what the users are saying, but also what they might be implying or leaving unsaid.
Share Insights with the Team
User interviews should not exist in a vacuum. Share your findings with your development team, UX designers, and other stakeholders.
Iterate
Use the insights gathered to inform your product roadmap, feature prioritization, and user personas. But remember, a single round of interviews is not enough. As your product and the market evolve, you’ll need to conduct more interviews to stay aligned with your users.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- Confirmation Bias: It’s natural to want validation for your ideas, but interviews are about discovering what users think, not confirming what you already believe.
- Talking More Than Listening: The interview is primarily for you to gather data, not to explain your product’s features or defend design choices.
- Ignoring Non-Verbal Cues: Sometimes what’s not said is as important as what is said. Pay attention to facial expressions, body language, and tone.
Conclusion
For product managers focused on leveling up their skills, mastering the art of the user interview is a necessity. Not only do interviews deepen your understanding of user needs, but they also bring you closer to the ultimate goal of any PM: creating a product that solves real problems and delivers exceptional value.
Remember, while the interview itself is crucial, the before and after are equally important. Preparing well can set the stage for a successful interview, while proper analysis and dissemination of insights can ensure that your team acts on what you’ve learned.