This resource will help you understand why user interviews are important, how they aren\u2019t about \u2018getting feedback\u2019, and what your questions should focus on. <\/p>\n
Read Part 2: what makes good and bad interview questions<\/a>. <\/p>\n User interviews are the main event in your user research<\/a>. User research is the first stage of any digital project, where you\u2019re researching, investigating the problem and gently testing an idea or two. <\/p>\n Whatever your digital project you need to do user research. Whoever the users are. Whatever the project type. User research will help you:<\/p>\n The best way to understand these things is to observe what people do. However, unless you want to observe them using a website or app, that can be difficult with Covid restrictions. So that leaves user interviews as the best way to do this. <\/p>\n You don\u2019t need to run many interviews. Six may be enough to start with. Later on you might decide to do six more using different questions, or you may ask a different stakeholder group, but your users are the first and most important group. <\/p>\n At Catalyst we believe you should always do user interviews. This is why:<\/p>\n You might think focus groups or surveys are enough. It\u2019s tempting to revert to what we know. But surveys and focus groups have big flaws<\/a> and don\u2019t surface the insight you need in deep or reliable ways. <\/p>\n User interviews are different. Group dynamics disappear, 1-1 connection becomes possible<\/a> and users feel more comfortable opening up and sharing their experiences. This generates deeper and more reliable insights.<\/p>\n User interviews are also easier to organise than any group, because you can do them at a time to suit each participant. Even though they are a big event, they are quick and cheap to do. Anyone can do them – no expertise is needed. All you need is to ask for a half hour chat on the phone or video, and to do your prep well. <\/p>\n You might think that the purpose of user interviews is to get feedback on your service. But its not. Interviews are about understanding your users\u2019 needs, about building empathy for their experiences. This means you need to explore their life beyond their experience of your service. <\/p>\n User interviews give you a way to do this. You get to learn about their life in a more rounded way. A way that gets you under the skin of how they experience it. This generates insight into the context in which they are living, their habits and behaviours and the emotional highs and lows of a typical day. <\/p>\n You might also believe you don’t need to do user research because your staff know your users so well. Some staff may have been working with them for a long time. <\/p>\n But your staff will still have things they don\u2019t know. And interviewing them about their observations on your users is much less reliable than asking people themselves. And people’s lives change. What we knew last month may no longer be the case. <\/p>\n \u201cUser interviews help break the power dynamic that can exist around assuming we know users’ lives and what\u2019s best for them without having recently listened.\u201d<\/em> – Ab Brightman, CAST<\/p>\n We all make them. We\u2019ve written about these in depth<\/a>. Assumptions are normal. And they need to be challenged. This includes your assumptions about the problem, the issues and your users\u2019 experiences and behaviours. Talking to your users is the only way to start. <\/p>\n \u201cBefore we had discovered \u2018assumptions mapping\u2019, it\u2019s fair to say we used our gut instinct. A lot. We\u2019d make relatively sweeping statements about what carers wanted or needed, and it wasn\u2019t that we were wrong per se, but we were relying a lot on anecdotes and assumptions.\u201d – <\/em>Janine Woodward-Grant – Deputy Chief Executive & Digital Lead at B&NES Carers’ Centre (read her great blog on user research<\/a>) <\/p>\n Your digital project will be built on the insights and understanding you gain at the start. If your insights aren\u2019t reliable then your foundations will be weak. And if you build on weak foundations then sooner or later things tend to fall down. <\/p>\n So do the groundwork and run user interviews. Collect evidence of what your users need. Then you can be confident about what to build and how much to build it. <\/p>\n \u201cRealising what we don\u2019t know makes it really clear what we need to find out from carers in order to design a service which works for them. This process revealed that we don\u2019t know what would make them feel confident. Without that knowledge, how can we design successfully?\u201d <\/em>– Janine Woodward-Grant<\/p>\n Some people don’t like the word \u2018user\u2019. In this case we define a user as someone who is experiencing the problem you want to solve<\/a> and is using digital technology or your services, or both.<\/p>\n But I\u2019d suggest that in the case of designing services it\u2019s actually helpful. It makes us focus on the fact that they are people wanting to use a service to get something done. They have a need and a goal, and they want your service to help fulfil these. By focusing on this desire you can create a better, more human-centred experience for them. <\/p>\n Next week we will explain how to ask questions in an interview. We will show you how to focus your questions on:<\/p>\n User interviews might feel like a big change in how you work. We know that, for many charities, shifting to user interviews and the curiosity mindset that goes with user research is a process not an event. We\u2019re here to help you through it. Use a Design Hop<\/a> to get started, or even a Digital Candle call<\/a> for some 1-1 support. <\/p>\nThe main user research event<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Six interviews may be enough<\/strong><\/h2>\n
5 reasons why you need to do user interviews<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1. To avoid the problems of surveys and focus groups<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. You need to build empathy more than get feedback<\/strong><\/h3>\n
This builds empathy. It brings you closer to them. It brings them closer to you. <\/h5>\n
3. Staff insight isn\u2019t enough<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4. We are full of assumptions<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. It creates foundations for the big decisions<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Why we use the word \u2018user\u2019 <\/strong><\/h2>\n
Focus your user interviews<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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You\u2019ll enjoy user interviews<\/strong><\/h2>\n