Overview: User interviews are amongst the most enlightening research methods in the UX research toolbox. A direct conversation with the target audience is bound to provide insight into the needs of users, their behavior, and experiences. As qualitative research, it supports designers in understanding the drives and challenges of users to come to more user-centered design decisions.

Key Terms:

Moderated Interviews: Pre-prepared or semi-prepared interviews or discussions where a researcher guides the interviewee through a series of questions.Unmoderated Interviews: Interviews or discussions which don't involve the direct participation of a researcher. Typically distributed as self-executable software or questionnaires.Persona: A character or persona created from interview data; a personification of part of your target audience.

Step-by-Step Process:

Set Objectives: Be really clear about what you would want to take away from the interviews. It could be as wide as recognizing user pain points or even understanding their decision-making process.

Recruit Participants: Find representative users of your target audience and recruit them. You can do this through email lists, social media, and other agencies of recruitment.

Interview Guide: Formulate open-ended questions that act as guidelines for the interviews. Of course, leave room for spontaneity, but not at the expense of collecting interesting details in abundance.

Skew the interviews: Invite those who are willing to be interviewed into a friendly setting where they are made to feel welcome and openly supported in sharing their thoughts and experiences. Note some of the statements more precisely during or after the interview with audio tape or video.

Analyze the data: transcribe your recordings of the interviews and highlight common themes, patterns, and insights. This, in essence, points to where the money is because the insights derived from there would be implemented in influencing the design decision.

Synthesize findings: Based on your interview findings, create personas, journey maps, or other deliverables that will synthesize these in a way that will be communicated to your wider team.

‍

Further reading sources

Nilsen Norman Group: most comprehensive resources touching upon running user interviews, along with any other UX research method.

‍DIDEO's Design Kit: Intensely practical pieces of advice and tools to run effective user interviews.

"Interviewing Users" by Steve Portigal: The ultimate book on how to interview users effectively.

Example: You're going to be building a new exercise app. Once you've concluded a couple of user interviews, you might feel that most of your users don't have enough time to actually work out and would want to do high-intensity exercises rather quickly. You might find that right here will come your major features in the form of short exercise routines and reminders.

More on Resources:

Maze: best tool for remote, unmoderated user interviews.

Lookback: for recording and analysing moderated interviews.