By gathering information regarding users feelings, behaviors, motivations, objectives, and routines, UX designers learn how to improve user experiences. They do this via user interviews.

1. 5 Tips for Conducting User Interviews
By Lia Bischoff, ​Codal Inc
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By gathering information regarding users feelings, behaviors, motivations,
objectives, and routines, UX designers learn how to improve user
experiences. They do this via user interviews.
User interviews are great at all stages! Before you design as to provide
information concerning personas, journey maps, and feature ideas. Or
even after a ​user test​ in order to provide verbal responses as contexts to
your findings.
Below are ​Codal’s​, a​ ​user experience research services company​,​ five tips
for conducting user interviews!
1. Ask the right questions
Anyone can ask questions, but asking meaningful questions that elicit
informative feedback takes some preparation.
Don’t ask “yes or no” questions and avoid vague questions. You want to
ask thought provoking questions that require users to provide genuine, and
explanatory, responses. For example, “Why or why don’t you like the
checkout process?” or “Tell me about your experience using our product.”
Also, keep in mind the interview is not a sales pitch. Keep your questions
neutral. This is not an opportunity to promote your product.
2. Try to anticipate follow-up questions

2. While you can’t predict the
future, chances are you will
have at least ​some​ idea as to
how your users will respond to
your questions. That being
said, try to anticipate their
answers with follow-up
questions in order to keep the
interview moving forward and
gather even more information.
3. Remember human flaws and limitations
User interviews receive self-reported data that reflect feelings and
perceptions, both of which are inherently subjective. While we proceed to
conduct user interviews seeking out these subjective responses, they are
not void of human flaws and limitations.
Important flaws and limitations to keep in mind:
● Some people may feel pressure to answer questions a certain way
and as a result either omit details or include unnecessary details.
● Human memory is not entirely reliable - take this into account when
receiving any and all answers.
● People prone to cognitive biases - this is certainly something to for
both the interviewer and interviewee, however answers given in bias
can give skewed results research.
Caption: image courtesy of ​Visual Capitalist
4. Topics to cover during the interview

3. While this list is not
exhaustive, nor should
you limit your interview
to these topics, start
here:
● Background
information - general
info about the user,
such as age, location,
demographic,
ethnographic, etc..
● General technology use - user’s experience with technology,
frequency of using technology, and types of technology being used.
● Use of the product - determine how your user uses your product.
● Objectives and motivations - why your user uses your product.
● Pain points - users are usually pretty aware of their frustrations and
where they originate so take advantage of this!
5. Make sure user
interviews is what
you need
There are many
different means to
address the UX of your
product, including but
not limited to user
interviews. However,
oftentimes a user, or
usability, test is needed

4. opposed to user interviews.
If you’re needing to know things like whether a design is easy to use or
what technically makes a design easy or difficult, then consider a usability
test.
Caption: Table highlighting some differences between user testing and user
interviewing from ​Nielsen Norman Group​.
Not sure which test is right for you? ​Chicago ux design ​agency, ​Codal​, can
help!
Your conducted your user interview: now what?
Hopefully your
user interview was
a success and you
acquired plenty of
valuable
information. Time
to start using that
data!
Maybe the goal of
your product is
digital transformation in healthcare, maybe your product a​im is ​digital
transformation in logistics, or maybe you’re looking for an eCommerce
solution but your user interview results require a solution.
Contact​ Codal! Let us apply our user research services to your ​product and
business.