Without a doubt, the most important playbook for a Product Manager to have is a deep understanding of who their users actually are. Often, I find that we make assumptions, sitting behind our cozy, familiar desks, far far away from our actual users. It’s easy to forget the WHO and the WHY when most of our days are spent figuring out the WHAT.
Before we packed our bags for Europe, we went through a training on how to conduct in-person interviews. We practiced on ourselves and each other. We even had to record ourselves as the interviewer; playing back our ‘game tapes’ to understand what we needed to improve. It was worth the effort, but also very cringe worthy. Listening to yourself and seeing how you respond is always hard at first. I learned a lot of what not to do and found that I had a tendency to lead the user in their responses. I nodded my head a lot and agreed with what they had to say. I wanted to encourage them, thinking this would help me get better responses. But in actuality, it was biasing them. Causing them to respond in a more positive way than if I had just remained silent. I’m still working on this one, but I notice it earlier in my conversations and am able to course correct as a result.
Here are 11 key takeaways from that user interview training that I think can apply to all interview situations:
Start with approximately 4 user interviews, try for 6-8. You don’t need to interview tons and tons of users off the bat. Start small. Be realistic. Patterns will emerge sooner than you think.
Keep the interview 1:1 (if possible). When too many people are in the room at once, you will find that one personality will dominate the conversation. Having a one-on-one conversation is the best way to dig into real problems.
Have someone take notes. Their job is just to listen and document what happened. I found these notes to be vital, especially after conducting more than one interview in a day. Everything can easily start to blur together. If your note taker can jot down interesting quotes, that can be very handy in the future.
Record sessions (if you can). Make sure to ask for the interviewees permission before doing so. Try to make the recording inconspicuous. Seeing yourself on camera can be very distracting.
Take a minute to warm up your interviewee. A casual conversation will help them relax. Most of us are not used to being interviewed and it can be a little unnerving at first.
Ask them to perform tasks versus answering questions directly. If you can, try to get them to show you instead of telling you. A lot of times people explain things differently than how they actually perform them.
Don’t explain what they are doing wrong. This is a hard one for me. My instinct is to want to help, but by correcting them you are taking over their authority. It can also derail the conversation. Stay quiet in the moment. You can always follow up later.
Try not to talk too much… like as little as possible. Your job as the interviewer is to LISTEN to them and make them feel heard. If you talk too much, you won’t get a lot out of the conversation.
Keep a neutral response. As I eluded to earlier, nodding and agreeing is actually the complete opposite of what you should do. I know it’s hard, but just be Switzerland. You are neither happy nor sad. You are the face of neutrality. Good luck – this is a tricky one!
People won’t be mean to your face (for the most part). Remember that ultimately there will be some bias in users’ responses. If you start to sense some resistance, ask them if they are comfortable talking about the subject. If they are not, move on. This is not the time to pry or make them feel uncomfortable.
Echoing back instead of just asking why. This is a powerful technique to ensure you understand a user. You will be surprised at how often you misinterpret what they are saying. Clarifying is always helpful.
The next thing our training course helped us prepare for was how to ask good questions. More than just setting the stage is ensuring that you are not influencing the person you are interviewing. Many times we find that research results can just be a validation of our assumptions. Interviewers tend to ask questions that lead to answers they subconsciously (or consciously) are seeking.
Here are 5 tips for how to ask good questions:
Answer questions with questions. If the user asks you if they are doing something right don’t respond with a yes or no answer. Instead ask “What would you expect to happen?” or “What thoughts were going through your head when you did that?”
Ask open ended questions. They usually begin with:
Why
How
What
Avoid close ended questions. They often start with:
Do
Is
Are
Would
Write intended questions in advance. We created a template for each type of user persona we interviewed. Note this is not a script, but rather a guideline for asking similar and targeted questions to each user.
Embrace awkward silence. Long pauses are OKAY. This one was so hard for me. If you try to fill space, like I did at first, you actually cut short a lot of interesting conversations. If you leave them open, it will force the user to think more deeply and respond further. Yes, it’s awkward, but you will be shocked at what responses you get after.
In the end, we interviewed over 60 customers in just 3 months. I came out of this experience with a real sense of WHO are users were and what challenges they faced on a daily basis. It was such an eye-opening experience. I felt the passion many of our users had for what they do and also empathized with the struggles they experienced.
At the end of every interview we conducted, we did a quick 5 minute de-brief between the interviewer and the note taker. We jotted down a few bullets on what we found most interesting about the conversation. This was so HELPFUL when we did our analysis later on. It made referencing back quick and easy, and surfaced the key points of each conversation. I’ll save our analysis project for another blog post, but I hope you are able to take some of these tips and use them in your next interview. You might just learn something new. Good luck!
