4.4 Interviewing Users 🎯

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This section includes an Activity 🎯

Learning objective

One of the most important skills you'll develop as a product manager is learning to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences. One major form of communication you'll use is interviews with users and stakeholders. Conducting effective interviews will be crucial to your success, as it will allow you to obtain the information you need to make good decisions about your product and priorities.

Many elements go into successful interviews, and this checkpoint will review them all. You need to help the interviewee feel comfortable, ask the right questions, listen actively, and take useful notes. When you master these skills, you'll be able to get the most from your interviews.

By the end of this checkpoint, you should be able to do the following:

• Describe the importance of interview skills for product managers
• List several methods and tools for conducting effective interviews
• Conduct an effective interview

Why interview?

All the work product managers do is in service of solving people's problems. Knowing what those problems are can be difficult. Luckily, there's a simple solution: you can ask them. An effective way to ask your users about their problems is to conduct an interview.

Interviews combine active listening with being engaging and thoughtful. If you can do this well, you will get the information you need. Conversely, if you ask poor questions, don't listen well, or come off as rude or uninterested, you'll get no answers, bad answers, or end up misinterpreting what people are telling you. Even worse, you could lose the trust of the person you're interviewing and ruin your chance of getting more information from them in the future.

A good interview in a nutshell

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when interviewing someone.

• Limit your goals. You'll never have enough time to get all the information you need. Focus only on the most important items.
• Write a guide. Take the time to prepare the questions you want to ask. Be thoughtful about your wording to elicit the best answers.
• Pick a good location. Make sure you're conducting the interview in a space that is relatively quiet and free of distractions, whether it's face-to-face or by video or phone.
• Inform the interviewee. Let the interviewee know what the interview is about and what the goals are. Giving context shows you respect them and helps interviewees give thoughtful answers.
• Listen actively. Be attentive and polite. Avoid interrupting the interviewee's speech, and pay attention to opportunities to ask follow-up questions.

The video below by Emmett Shear at Y Combinator gives an overview on how to conduct a useful interview.

Dive deeper into how to achieve a good interview by thinking about the before, during, and after of an interview below.

Before the interview

Before conducting any interview, complete the following preparation tasks. These help ensure that you're ready to conduct the interview, that you can get the information you need, and that your interviews are consistent across several interviewees.

Prioritize and limit your goals

A thirty-minute interview goes by extremely fast. You'll be surprised by how little you can discuss with someone. Similarly, you never know when your interview will get cut short by urgent matters or start later than planned due to technical issues or late interviewees. Keep your list of goals extremely short, and make sure that your goals are prioritized. Get through the most important items first.

Write good questions

An interview is only as good as the questions you ask. Take the time to write good questions. Here a few tips to help.

• Ask open-ended questions. Try to avoid yes/no questions. For example, instead of asking "Do you like X?", try "Tell me about the last time you used X."
• Ask for examples. Soliciting examples makes for better answers. Instead of asking "What are your thoughts about X?", try asking "Can you describe a time you did X?"
• Be neutral. "Why do you dislike X?" assumes an opinion the interviewee might not have actually expressed. Instead, ask a neutral question, like "Tell me your opinion on X."
• Avoid hypotheticals. It's tempting to ask "What would you think if we changed X?" But that asks for speculation, which may not align with what they'd really think when X changes.
• Ask one question at a time. Avoid two-question questions, like "When was the last time you did X, and what did you think about it?" Ask each of these questions separately.
• Be concise. Shorter questions can often prompt more detailed responses.
• Start with concrete ideas before moving to more abstract or interpretative questions. "Tell me about the last time you did X" should precede "What's your biggest problem with X?"

While these rules-of-thumb will help you plan good questions, there are special cases. One important exception to the first guideline on this list—ask open-ended questions—is to use a yes/no question in order to set up a better question. For example, "Have you tried the recommendation feature?" is typically a poor question, but if they say "No," you can quickly follow up with, "Why haven't you tried it?" Or, if they say "Yes," you could follow up with this: "What do you like about it?" These questions could lead to an illuminating back-and-forth.

Research your interviewee

A successful interview requires you to create trust quickly with your interviewee. Imagine that you ask, "When was the last time you used X?", and they've never used X. They may find you unprepared or unprofessional, which could quickly cause them to lose trust. Spend some time before your interview to learn the relevant information about the interviewee, and show them that you're prepared by asking strong questions that are specific to them.

Find a quiet place

Make sure to find an appropriate place to conduct the interview. Ideally, this will be a place free of distractions or interruptions. If your interviewee is coming to your office, try to look at the space through their eyes and choose the least distracting spot. You may not see the office the same way a newcomer will, so step back and try to look at it with fresh eyes. For instance, if you have a choice between a conference room with all glass walls or one with traditional walls, choose the one with traditional walls. If it's a phone or video call, make sure you can take the call in a quiet environment, that you won't experience technology issues, and that your background won't distract from what you're saying.

During the interview

Your conduct during the interview can go a long way toward making it successful. The tips below are good not just for interviews, but for communicating in general. Here's what you should do once you sit down and are ready to chat.

Preface the interview

Before you start asking questions, take a minute or two to introduce yourself, and then let the interviewee introduce themselves. Clearly explain the goal of the interview, including what you'll be asking about and why you want to talk with that interviewee specifically. Let them know there are no right or wrong answers and that their responses are not being judged. The idea is to create an inviting atmosphere where the interviewee feels free to be honest with their responses.

Take notes and record audio

Do your memory a favor and record audio of the interview as well as take notes. During the interview, you'll want to note key observations and items that you want to ask follow-up questions about. The audio recording will help you later if there's a great quote or other insights that you want to dig into.

Five whys

To fully understand your users' problems, you need to dig into their motivation and rationale. A common technique for doing this is known as the five whys. In it, you ask why as a follow-up to a question, then continue to ask why. By the fifth why, you will have discovered the root cause. You don't always need to ask all five; the point is to keep digging until you find the root of the problem. For example, say you're talking to a woman about why she has stopped using Facebook messenger. Your conversation may look something like this:

• You: When was the last time you used messenger?
• Woman: About a month ago.
• You: Why a month ago?
• Woman: It just stopped being useful.
• You: Why?
• Woman: None of my friends use it anymore.
• You: Why do you think they stopped using it?
• Woman: Everybody started using some other app instead.

At this point you've hit a big discovery, and you'll have a new line of questions to pursue.

Embrace silence

An interview is different from a conversation. In a conversation, you might interrupt each other or split your time talking evenly. In an interview, your interviewee should do most of the talking. As an interviewer, aim for an 80/20 split: listen 80% of the time, talk 20% of the time. Don't just let the interviewee complete their thought—pause before asking your next question. This will give the interviewee a chance to add more detail. Some of the best answers you'll receive are a result of a short moment of silence.

Listen actively

Pay close attention to responses to give yourself an opportunity to ask follow-up questions. It can be tempting to take lots of notes—so much so that you stop listening. This is why you're recording the audio. Focus your notes on only the important bits, like key phrases in their answer or items you want to follow up on. The cornerstone of a good interview is an interviewer that gives focused attention on the interviewee and their words.

Mind your cues

Your body language and other cues set the tone of the interview. If your holding an in-person interview, aim your posture at your interviewee—your shoulders, head, and legs should all be pointing toward them. This non-verbally indicates that you are listening. Keep neutral eye contact. Nod your head, and provide neutral encouragement and affirmation, like saying "Interesting" and "I see." This lets your interviewee know that your attention is focused on them.

If you're interviewing over the phone, be careful not to interrupt. Leave plenty of silence for the interviewee to complete their answers. Since you won't be able to demonstrate body language and facial cues, keep your voice upbeat to help convey confidence and positive energy.

After the interview

After the bulk of the interview is over, there are still a couple of important steps for you to complete. While these only take a few minutes to complete, they are crucial to ensuring you sustain a healthy relationship with the user you interviewed.

Thank them

Send the interviewee a quick thank you note and let them know how much you appreciate their time. Make it personal by adding something that you learned from them specifically. For example, you could say something like, "I really appreciate how you explained the problems you have when using our product's integration with Salesforce."

Write, store, and share a summary

Take a few minutes to summarize the interview in writing. Focus on key or interesting observations that are worth following up about. If possible, place your meeting notes in a shared location for future reference and to share with your coworkers. They'll be able to add extra context to what you learned.

Revise your questions

Sometimes you'll realize you had a few duds in your questions. If a question revealed no useful information or confused the interviewee, you know you'll need to revise your question or your guide. One strategy to improve your questions is to listen to a recording of the interview. By listening to your interviews, you create the opportunity to continually improve until you have a collection of tried-and-true questions that reliably yield valuable information. Even then, don't stop revising. Honing the quality of your questions and interviews is a never-ending pursuit.

Keep interviewing people until you don't get anything new

Conduct at least five interviews, at a minimum, before making a decision to continue or not. Many experts believe 5 to 8 interviews is the ideal number when it comes to interviewing users. Others cite a slightly higher range, such as 8 to 12. The best rule of thumb is to keep interviewing until you stop learning new things. Eventually, you'll hear the same answers and sentiments over and over again. When you are not learning any new information from additional interviewees, it's probably time to stop interviewing.

Good question, bad question

As an interviewer, you'll come to learn what makes a good question and what makes a bad question. Here are a few sample questions from an interview with a Facebook user about the news feed experience. Read each question, then ask yourself: is it a good question or a bad question? What makes each question good or bad?

• Do you like the news feed? This is a bad question. Not only is it a yes/no question, but it's biased. It leads the interviewee to answer that they do like it. Instead, a probing, unbiased question could be "What are your thoughts on the news feed?"

• What kind of news feed items do you like the most? This question is not great, but it's not terrible, either. The issue is that it's hypothetical. The interviewee's answer might be influenced by a funny video they viewed just before the interview. But in reality, their favorite items are investigative news articles. Instead, ask about a specific instance like, "Can you give me an example of a recent news feed item that you really enjoyed?" From there, you can expand into the general case and ask about their overall interests and preferences.

• What newsfeed content do you find yourself interacting with most (such as photos, videos, statuses)? This is a good question. It's open-ended enough to not lead interviewees in a particular direction but specific enough to elicit concrete examples.

• How do you feel about the ads you see in your news feed? This is also a good question. It provides them an opportunity to offer their opinion, but it also targets their response to the ads they see in their news feed specifically, not their feelings about ads in general.

Sample interview guide

Imagine you work at Spotify and wish to better understand how subscribers use the podcasts on Spotify. Your goal is to improve the app's podcast recommendations. Thanks to proper planning, the people you interview all use the podcast feature, so you don't need to ask, "Do you use the podcast feature?" (which was listed as a poor question, anyhow).

Recall from earlier in the checkpoint the importance of creating an interview guide. What should an interview guide look like? Below are some sample goals and questions created for this specific example.

Interview goals:

• Understand where and when people are listening to podcasts.
• Determine how people learn about and decide which podcasts to listen to.
• Discover how people are already using Spotify's recommendations.

Sample questions:

Preferences

• What's your favorite podcast to listen to right now?
  • Why?
• Are there certain genres you prefer?
  • Which ones?
  • Why?
• Are there certain genres you don't listen to?
  • Which ones?
  • Why?
• Can you give me an example of a podcast you tried but disliked?
  • How much did you listen to before you stopped?
  • Why did you stop listening?

Location

• In general, where are you listening to podcasts?
• Do you listen to different podcasts in different places?
  • If so, can you give me some examples?
  • Why do you do that?

Recommendations

• Let's go through a few of your favorite podcasts. Where did you hear about them?
• How do you learn about most of the podcasts you listen to?
  • Why do you think that method is the main source of learning about them?
• Have you tried the podcast recommendation feature in Spotify?
  • What did you think of it?
• Has Spotify recommended any podcasts that you really love?
  • Which ones?
  • What did you like about that podcast?
• Has Spotify recommended any podcasts that you did not like?
  • Which ones?
  • Why didn't you like that one?
• What are your thoughts on Spotify recommendations?

Activity 🎯

Choose a favorite product of yours. Imagine that you're the product manager in charge of this product and you are going to interview people about this product. Write an interview guide.

Your guide should include your goals for the interview and at least eight questions you plan on asking. You could focus on any number of goals, but ask yourself these questions:

• Do you want to find out how they use the product?
• Do you want to know why they've stopped using the product?
• Do you want to understand how they learned about the product?
• Do you want to understand how they use a specific feature of the product?

You'll use this guide to interview three real users (or non-users) in the next checkpoint, so be sure to pick a product you can find people to talk to about. If there are any local employers you are interested in applying to work for, you may want to choose one of their products to investigate. (This will give you a great story for a future job interview!)

Aim for about 30 minutes' worth of discussion. You might not know how many questions you can ask in that amount of time, so make sure to prioritize your list of questions.