Knowing how, when, and why to conduct user interviews is especially important when trying to learn more about the needs and expectations of your target audience. This is why most businesses choose to outsource this vital task to professional UX agencies to make sure that they get the best out of this qualitative research method.
Read on to learn more about why this method is so important in UX design, as well as how and when user interviews should be conducted!
User interviews – What are they?
User interviews are one of the many services provided by UX design agencies in order to get deeper insights into the mindset of your potential customers.
Apart from more well-known technical services like web development and coding, UX agencies also provide a multitude of research methods which are needed to provide a basis for the quality user experience you aim to create. As the name indicates, UX design focuses on users – no website, application, software, or product can meet the expectations of your target audience if you don’t know what to focus on (or what to avoid).
Compared to large-scale quantitative methods like online surveys, user interviews are more in-depth, relying on a more open format compared to multiple-choice questions, where participants can elaborate on their opinions about a certain physical or digital product. They usually last no more than an hour and only include more than 12 participants in the case of large service providers.
What you need to keep in mind about user interviews, is that no research method alone can cover all bases and viewpoints. This is why UX agencies usually recommend combining different research methods together to get a clearer picture of your users’ needs, expectations, motivations, and fears.
How to conduct user interviews
Knowing how to conduct user interviews is one of the many talents of a professional UX agency – many companies choose to outsource this task instead of spending in-house work hours on conducting research. UX agencies employ a variety of experts to handle all sorts of tasks from web development to market research and can be much more efficient in helping you manage your projects and reach your business goals. They know exactly how to conduct user interviews to make sure you get some useful input at the end of the research process.
Still, that doesn’t mean you get no say in the interview process. You can help in providing participants that fit your customer profile and discuss the scenario of the user interview with the UX agency. The greatest part of the work, of course, will be the responsibility of the agency you hired – conducting the user interviews and analyzing the data collected from the participants.
When asked about how to conduct user interviews, UX agencies usually outline the following points:
- User interviews are qualitative research methods that focus on in-depth exchanges in order to get insights that you simply cannot observe in less personal methods. As such, it is vital to create a relaxed atmosphere and make sure that users feel like they can open up and be as honest as they want to be, even if their opinion is a negative one. Otherwise, you’ll never know what features to avoid or what to improve upon. User interviews aren’t about testing your users – they are about testing your product.
- To know how to conduct user interviews, you also have to be able to create semi-structured scenarios. Compared to fully structured interviews, they feel much more natural to your users and also leave room to explore topics you may not have thought about including when planning the interview. Still, an interview cannot solely rely on making some friendly small talk, which is why UX agencies advise against completely unstructured interviews – otherwise, you may not get the answers you were looking for in the first place.
- Knowing how to conduct user interviews is also about being able to ask the right questions to help you reach the goal you set for this research. You will need specific questions and a clear goal in mind to know how to improve upon your physical or digital products.
When to conduct user interviews
Timing is also important during research – UX agencies know full when to conduct user interviews to help you get some useful insight which can be used to improve your user experience.
Here are some examples of when to conduct user interviews:
- In order to supplement previous quantitative research with some deeper qualitative insights.
- Before the completion of your UX design process – useful for planning the complete user experience with your users’ feedback in mind, and avoid spending unnecessary resources without any of your users’ expectations in mind.
- In the prototype testing phase – useful for getting feedback about the current user experience of your product or website before going to market, and making changes based on concrete user needs.
Why to conduct user interviews?
To sum up, these are the main reason why you should consider conducting user interviews:
- a quick way to get useful feedback about your users’ perception
- can potentially provide you with key information that would not be possible in the average survey
- they can be combined with other research methods to help you get the big picture
- they are a great way to test prototypes before going to market