01 / UNDERSTAND
What are user interviews?
User interviews are conversations designed to understand people’s experiences, circumstances and priorities. They provide accounts of what happened and what it meant to the participant. They do not directly demonstrate how someone will use a design or how common a behaviour is across a population. Treat the account as evidence with a context, rather than a list of feature requests.
Why use User Interviews?
Interviews help a team ask better questions before choosing a solution. A request for reminders may be about remembering a task, uncertainty about a deadline or difficulty arranging help. Exploring a recent event can reveal which problem deserves attention. The output is an account the team can analyse, not a vote on the product roadmap.
When to use it
USE IT WHEN
You need to understand a situation before deciding what to design.
Existing evidence shows a behaviour but not the circumstances around it.
Different groups may face different constraints in the same service.
When to choose another method
Use Usability Testing to observe whether people can complete tasks with a design.
Use other evidence to estimate prevalence; a small interview set does not establish population proportions.
Avoid interviews that merely ask people to approve an already chosen feature.
What you’ll need
Write research questions and recruit people with relevant experience, including circumstances the service may overlook. Prepare open topics, a consent process and secure note storage. Explain participation and recording choices clearly. Arrange accessible sessions and appropriate support. Pilot the guide so questions invite accounts rather than long explanations of your product.
What the method needs
Keep the elements that help answer your question and support a decision.
What uncertainty the study must help resolve.
Relevant experience and circumstances, not convenience alone.
Topics and neutral prompts rather than a rigid script.
How people choose to participate and receive any support needed.
Participant codes, exact quotes and contextual notes.
Patterns, differences, limitations and a next decision.
02 / PUT IT INTO PRACTICE
How to conduct user interviews
Keep evidence and assumptions distinct. Revisit your work when new information changes your understanding.
01
Focus the study
State what you need to learn and how it will inform a decision.
Investigate how people manage an appointment change.
02
Recruit for relevance
Choose participants whose recent experience fits the question.
Include people who needed help or used a telephone route.
03
Prepare and pilot
Check the consent process, topic order and neutral prompts.
Try “Tell me about the last time you changed an appointment.”
04
Follow an event
Ask what happened before, during and after a concrete episode.
Explore how they noticed the conflict and what they did next.
05
Probe without prescribing
Ask for context and examples, avoiding your preferred explanation.
Ask what made the change difficult, rather than whether reminders would help.
06
Analyse and act
Compare accounts, preserve exceptions and record what remains unknown.
Choose which obstacle needs observation or a design experiment.
Example: changing an appointment
Illustrative scenario: the account is invented. A participant describes missing an appointment because their work shift changed. They saw the original reminder, but could not find how to move the booking without cancelling it.
The interviewer asks what they tried and what they expected each option to do. The fictional account suggests a question about rescheduling, rather than evidence that more reminders are needed. The next step is to observe people attempting that task and review how the service handles changes. One account cannot establish how many missed appointments have this cause.
03 / BELOW THE SURFACE
Below the surface: an explanation is also a reconstruction
People explain past events with the knowledge they have now. A clear narrative can hide uncertainty about what they knew at the time. Separate the event from its later explanation. Ask what was visible, what information was available and what the person did next, without cross examining them.
01 / EVIDENCE
What is supported?
Which source or observation supports the current interpretation?
02 / LIMIT
What remains uncertain?
Which assumption would change the decision if it were wrong?
03 / ACTION
What happens next?
Who will investigate or test the next step, and when?
Where appropriate and with permission, a message or document can anchor the discussion. Contradictions are a reason to understand context, not a reason to label a participant unreliable. Keep interpretation separate from the record so the team can revisit it when observation or service data adds another perspective.
User Interviews template
Use the first page for the practical work and the second to challenge the reasoning before choosing a next step. The canvas follows this guide and keeps evidence, assumptions and decisions visible.
The two page PDF contains 13 editable fields. Open it in a PDF reader that supports forms and save a working copy.
Practical tips
Ask for recent examples before asking for general opinions.
Allow pauses and follow the participant’s language.
Debrief soon after a session while keeping interpretation separate from notes.
Common mistakes
Pitching a solution during the interview.
Turning a leading question into apparent evidence.
Treating reported behaviour as if it had been observed.
What you’ll get
Contextual accounts, open questions and a research decision. Keep the supporting evidence and unresolved questions with the output. Assign an owner to the next action and revisit the result when the underlying situation changes. The method supports judgement; the completed canvas is not proof that the proposed choice will work.