One-on-one interviews are one of the best methods for gaining deep user insights. They allow us to better understand their needs, motivations and behaviors, which helps to design more suitable products and services. This practical guide presents the key steps for conducting effective one-on-one interviews.
Preparing for interviews
Set goals
Before you begin, it is important to clarify what you want to learn from these interviews. Objectives can vary and include, for example, understanding current problems faced by users, obtaining feedback on a specific prototype or feature, exploring user behaviors and motivations.
It is important to take the time to define these objectives in order to guide the interviews and maximize their effectiveness.
Select participants
Identifying target users is a crucial step, aligned with the objectives of the study. It is advisable to include a representative sample of the audience to obtain meaningful results. Selection criteria may vary based on age, gender, skill level or product usage. This diversity helps capture a wide range of experiences and perspectives.
This selection step can also raise questions of fairness between users. It's important to respect the principles of inclusiveness and diversity, ensuring that all segments of your audience are fairly represented. This diversity helps capture a wide range of experiences and perspectives.
Prepare the questions
Creating a well-structured interview guide is also essential. It is helpful to formulate open-ended questions that encourage participants to freely share their thoughts and experiences. It is necessary to avoid biased or leading questions, which helps to obtain more honest and detailed answers.
For example:
- “Can you describe a situation where you used [product/service]?”
- “What challenges have you encountered while using [product/service]?”
- “How did you solve these problems?”
These are questions that can provide valuable insights without directing participant responses.
By approaching preparation in this way, you are better equipped to conduct effective, insightful one-on-one interviews that can provide deep, actionable insights to improve your products and services.
Conducting interviews
Create a friendly environment
To make participants feel comfortable from the start, it can be helpful to explain the objectives of the interview and reassure them that their responses will be confidential. A relaxed environment is often conducive to more honest and detailed answers.
Active listening
Paying particular attention to the participants without interrupting them can enrich the quality of the discussions. Showing interest with nods and appropriate facial expressions can encourage participants to express themselves more. Asking follow-up questions can also help delve deeper into their answers.
Observe nonverbal behaviors
Gestures, facial expressions and body language of participants can provide important information. Noting these observations can be helpful for later analysis.
Use probing techniques
If the answers are vague or short, it is possible to use probing techniques to get more details. For example :
– Can you say more about this?
– Why is this important to you?
– How does this make you feel?
These approaches enable richer, more detailed insights to be gathered, helping to better understand user perspectives and experiences.
Data analysis
Transcribe and organize data
After the interviews, it is important to take the time to transcribe the recordings (with the permission of the participants) and organizing the data can be a crucial step. Using tools like spreadsheets or qualitative analysis software can make it easier to structure information.
Additionally, using AI can save time, while being vigilant about privacy. A well-established prompt can help generate User Stories.
Identify themes and trends
Thereafter will come a research stage. It will be necessary to analyze the insights to extract recurring themes and trends from participant responses. These may reveal important information. By noting commonalities and differences, it will be easier to identify critical issues and opportunities for improvement.
Finally, using Figjam and its notes system can be an interesting method to more easily classify this information.
Synthesize insights
Summarizing key insights by relating them to the study objectives can provide a clear view of the results. Creating personas or user experience maps can also be useful to visualize the insights obtained.
Conclusion
One-on-one interviews offer a valuable method for gaining deep user insights. By taking a structured approach and using active listening techniques, it is possible to gain rich insights that can guide the UX design process. It is important to note that the success of these interviews often depends on careful preparation, respectful and open conduct, and data analysis that is rigorous but also flexible to capture all the nuances of participants' responses. .
Florianne Nollet, UX-UI designer consultant at UX-Republic
