User interviews.
User interviews are structured conversations exploring how people work, what they are trying to achieve and where they struggle. They produce depth and explanation that behavioural data cannot.
Where User interviews fits on a long engagement.
What people say they would do is a poor predictor of what they do. Asking "would you use this" reliably produces polite agreement, while asking "tell me about the last time you had this problem" produces an account of actual behaviour — which is the only thing worth designing from.
Leading questions are the standard failure and they are easy to fall into when you have a hypothesis. "Was that frustrating?" plants the answer; "what happened next?" does not. Interview technique is a real skill rather than a matter of being a good conversationalist.
What an assigned team does with User interviews.
Analysis is the part that gets cut when time is short, and it is where the value is. Ten recorded interviews with no synthesis is ten hours of audio; the same interviews analysed into patterns are a basis for decisions.
Budgeting analysis time as seriously as session time is part of how research is scoped under outsource ux design.
What we use User interviews for.
- Past behaviour rather than stated intent Accounts of what actually happened, which predict far better than opinions.
- Technique that avoids planting answers Open questions, because a hypothesis makes leading questions easy.
- Analysis budgeted properly Synthesis time planned, since unanalysed sessions are only recordings.
How User interviews capacity is assigned.
Interview research is assigned inside design capacity, with analysis time scoped alongside session time rather than absorbed.
Tell us what your roadmap needs User interviews for.
A service delivery manager replies with the disciplines we would assign, the monthly capacity and what the first month looks like.
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