Conducting a user interview is one of the most valuable moments in UX research. But a good interview isn't just about asking questions: it's about how you open the conversation, how you listen, and how you respond.
To help you, I'm sharing here 7 simple and effective questions that I regularly use during my discoveries and some practical tips to make them truly effective.
If you want to delve deeper into the methodology and best practices, I also recommend reading the article How to conduct effective individual interviews?, And 7 keys to user interviews for perfectly complement this topic.
1. Tell me about your daily life: what does a typical day look like for you?
This question is ideal for opening a dialogue and beginning to put yourself in the user's shoes. This allows you to discover their environment, habits and priorities, which provides an essential basis for understanding the user.
2. What do you like or frustrate about your current processes on our product?
Asking this question helps open the door to balanced feedback: what the user really appreciates and what they struggle with on a daily basis. It allows you to understand what makes the product valuable to them—speed, simplicity, efficiency, etc.—but also to identify moments where the experience breaks down. Feedback, whether positive or negative, is valuable: keep what generates enthusiasm and view the irritants as avenues for improvement. The key is to let the user express themselves without interrupting and to avoid jumping to the solution too quickly.
3. What are the most important tasks for you on a daily basis?
The goal here is to reveal user priorities and help prioritize needs. By understanding the user's daily activities, you can focus your design efforts on the solutions that will have the most impact and value in improving their day-to-day lives.
4. Can you describe the last time you encountered a problem that blocked you from using our product?
Here, you can invite the user to share a real-life experience about a problem they recently encountered. This helps identify real pain points, understand the context and causes of problems, and gain insights to improve the product.
5. Conversely, can you describe the last time you had a great experience with our product?
Unlike the previous question, this one highlights the product's strengths from the user's perspective. This reveals positive emotions, which are essential for understanding loyalty.
6. If you had a magic wand, what would your ideal tool look like?
The point here is to open up the field of unexpressed aspirations and needs. It highlights unsolved problems and stimulates creativity. By listening to the description of your ideal tool, you identify and prioritize the essential features to design a truly useful and desired solution.
7. Is there anything we haven't discussed that is important to you?
This is an essential closing question. It lets the user express themselves freely and often brings out unexpected insights. It also verifies that the interview is complete, encourages open and honest conversation, and can reveal design opportunities you hadn't anticipated.
Conclusion
A good user interview is not only based on a question guide, but also on the quality of listening, curiosity, the ability to get the user to talk about their real experience and knowing how to respond.
These 7 questions provide a solid foundation for exploring frustrations, expectations, and positive moments, while still allowing space for the user to share what truly matters to them and thus participate in an exchange and not be pestered with questions.
When conducted well, your user interviews are an essential basis for designing focused experiences and concrete solutions.
Remember that answers aren't just words: body language, silences, and nonverbal cues often provide as much insight as the verbal responses themselves.
To go further, you can read the article 5 Essential Psychological Principles for UX/UI Designers, which perfectly complements these good practices by shedding light on the cognitive and emotional mechanisms to be taken into account.
Julie Bouvier, Product designer at UX-Republic
