Rules for Interviewing End Users

You and your colleagues may not be used to stopping people on the street to interview them. You may not be used to entering their homes. A few dos and don'ts are needed if you choose to approach your target users yourself.

You can find numerous articles, books, and blogs on the subject of interviewing. Here I will just emphasize a few key guidelines. Most of the benefit will come from the few guidelines I list here.

• Do not ask leading questions to users, such as, “Do you want gears on your bicycle?” They will most likely say yes no matter what they think. Ask open-ended questions instead, such as, “What problems do you encounter when pedalling over changing terrain?”
• Try to get under the skin of the users. Try to find out their current and latent needs. Ask them about their typical behavior when they use your or related products.
• Do not ask users only product-related questions. Try to find out who they are and be open and be ready for long stories about their life. Being honestly interested in people and their lives will not only help those people to open up and give you better insights, but it will help their stories sometimes become the core source of new innovations that you wouldn't otherwise think about.
• Do not use fancy equipment such as recorders and video cameras unless you already have agreed on this with the users. Also, keep in mind that what people say to a camera or a recorder will be very biased compared to what they will say in a casual conversation. When you finish the interview, you can ask if you can take a single photo of the person you interviewed. This photo will be very useful for you later when documenting the user needs for that specific person.

Be open, be honest, and be humble. Avoid being perceived as confrontational. It's so easy for an interview to go off the rails, as depicted in Figure 4-9. Open-ended questions, willingness to listen, and genuine interest go a long way toward avoiding interview failure.

Figure 4-9. Interview gone wrong