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How to conduct effective user interviews for UX research

User interviews are a popular UX research technique, providing valuable insight into how your users think and feel. Learn about the different types of user interviews and how to conduct your own in this guide.

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User interviews are a popular UX research technique, providing valuable insight into how your users think and feel. Learn about the different types of user interviews and how to conduct your own in this guide. 

User research is fundamental for good UX. It helps you get to know your users and design products that meet their needs and solve their pain-points. 

One of the most popular UX research methods is user interviews. With this technique, you get to hear from your users first-hand, learning about their needs, goals, expectations, and frustrations—anything they think and feel in relation to the problem space.

But when should you conduct user interviews and how do you make sure they yield valuable results?

Follow this guide and you’ll be a user interview pro. We explain:

What are user interviews in UX research?

What are the different types of user interviews, when should you conduct user interviews, what data and insights do you get from user interviews, how to conduct effective user interviews for ux research: a step-by-step guide.

• What happens next? How to analyse your user interview data

First things first: What are user interviews?

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Interviews are one of the most popular UX research methods. They provide valuable insight into how your users think, feel, and talk about a particular topic or scenario—allowing you to paint a rich and detailed picture of their needs and goals. 

interviews take place on a one-to-one basis, with a UX designer or UX researcher asking the user questions and recording their answers. They can last anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour, and they can be done at various stages of a UX design project. 

There are several different types of user interviews. They can be:

• Structured, semi-structured, or unstructured
• Generative, contextual, or continuous
• Remote or in-person

Let’s explore these in more detail.

Structured vs. semi-structured vs. unstructured user interviews

Structured interviews follow a set list of questions in a set order. The questions are usually closed—i.e. there’s a limit to how participants can respond (e.g. “Yes” or “No”). Structured interviews ensure that all research participants get exactly the same questions, and are most appropriate when you already have a good understanding of the topic/area you’re researching. 

Structured interviews also make it easier to compare the data gathered from each interview. However, a disadvantage is that they are rather restrictive; they don’t invite much elaboration or nuance. 

Semi-structured interviews are based on an interview guide rather than a full script, providing some pre-written questions. These tend to be open-ended questions, allowing the user to answer freely. The interviewer will then ask follow-up questions to gain a deeper understanding of the user’s answers. Semi-structured interviews are great for eliciting rich user insights—but, without a set script of questions, there’s a high risk of researcher bias (for example, asking questions that unintentionally lead the participant in a certain direction). 

Unstructured user interviews are completely unscripted. It’s up to the interviewer to come up with questions on the spot, based on the user’s previous answers. These are some of the trickiest types of user interviews—you’re under pressure to think fast while avoiding questions that might bias the user’s answer. Still, if done well, unstructured interviews are great if you have very little knowledge or data about the domain and want to explore it openly. 

Generative vs. contextual vs. continuous user interviews

Generative user interviews are ideal for early-stage exploration and discovery. They help you to uncover what you don’t know—in other words, what insights are you missing? What user problem should you be trying to solve? Which areas and topics can you identify for further user research? Generative interviews are usually unstructured or semi-structured. 

Contextual user interviews take place in a specific context—while the user is carrying out a certain task, for example. This allows you to not only observe the user’s actions/behaviour first-hand, but also to ask questions and learn more about why the user takes certain actions and how they feel in the process. Contextual interviews tend to be semi-structured. 

Continuous user interviews are conducted as part of continuous UX research. While traditional user research is done within the scope of a specific project, continuous UX research is ongoing, conducted at regular interviews (e.g. weekly or monthly) with the goal of continuous product improvement. Continuous interviews are like regular check-ins with your users, giving you ongoing insight into their needs, goals, and pain-points. 

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Remote vs. in-person user interviews

A final distinction to make is between remote and in-person interviews. 

In-person user interviews take place with the user and researcher in the same room. A big advantage of in-person interviews is that you’re privy to the user’s body language—an additional insight into how they feel. 

Remote user interviews take place via video call. Like any kind of remote work, they’re more flexible and may be more accessible for research participants as they don’t require any travel. 

User interviews provide value at various stages of a design project. You can use them for:

• Discovery and ideation —when you want to learn more about your target users and the problems they need you to solve.
• UX testing and product improvement —when you want to get user feedback on an existing design concept or solution.
• Continuous UX research —you can run regular interviews as part of a continuous UX research framework. 

Let’s take a closer look. 

User interviews for discovery and ideation

User interviews can be useful right at the beginning of a UX project, when you don’t know much (or anything) about the domain and don’t yet have a design direction. At this stage, everything is pretty open and your user interviews will be exploratory. 

Conducting user interviews early in the process will help you to answer questions such as “Who are our target users?”, “What problems do they need us to solve?” and “What are their goals and expectations in relation to the problem space?”

Here you’ll be focusing on generative user interviews (i.e. finding out what you don’t know), and they’ll likely be unstructured or semi-structured.

User interviews as part of UX testing and product improvement

User interviews also come in handy when you have an idea or concept you want to evaluate, or even a working product you want to test. 

At this stage, you might present the user with a prototype and ask them questions about it. If you’re further along in the design process, you can run user interviews as an add-on to UX testing —having the user interact with a working prototype (or the product itself) and asking them questions at the same time. These are the contextual interviews we described earlier. 

Conducting user interviews at this stage will help you gain insight into how your users feel about a concept/product/experience and to identify pain-points or usability issues within the existing design. 

User interviews as part of continuous UX research

User interviews are also valuable as part of a continuous UX research framework. Here, there is no project-specific goal—rather, you’re interviewing users regularly to gain ongoing user insights. This enables you to maintain a user-centric design process and to evolve your product continuously as you learn more about your users. 

You can learn more about the importance of continuous UX research here .

User interviews allow you to hear from the user, in their own words, how they think and feel about a particular problem space/experience/task. This provides rich insights into their thoughts, beliefs, experiences, problems, goals, desires, motivations, and expectations, as well as the rationale or thought process behind certain actions. 

As such, user interviews generate qualitative data . That is, data which tells you about a person’s thoughts, feelings, and subjective experiences. It’s the opposite of quantitative data which is objective, numerical, and measurable. You can learn more about the difference between quantitative and qualitative user research data here .

Note that user interviews generate self-reported data . Self-reported data is based on what the user chooses to share with you (you’re not observing it; rather, you’re hearing it from the user). It’s how they report to be feeling or thinking. 

If you conduct contextual user interviews, you’ll gather a mixture of observational data (based on what you observe the user doing) and self-reported data. 

After conducting user interviews, you’ll end up with lots of data in the form of interview transcripts, audio or video recordings, and your own notes. We’ll look at how to analyse your user interview data in the final section of this guide. 

First, though, here’s a step-by-step plan you can follow to conduct effective user interviews. 

Ready to conduct your own user interviews? Follow our step-by-step guide to get started.

• Determine what type of user interviews you’ll conduct
• Write your user interview script (or guide)
• Set up the necessary tools
• Recruit your interview participants
• Perfect your interview technique

Let’s walk through our plan step by step. 

1. Determine what type of user interviews you’ll conduct

Earlier in this guide, we outlined the different types of user interviews: Structured, semi-structured, and unstructured; generative, contextual, and continuous; and remote and in-person. 

The first step is to determine what format your user interviews will take. This depends on:

• What stage you’re at in the project/process
• What your research goals are

If you’re at the very early stages of a design project, you’ll likely want to keep your user interviews open and exploratory—opting for unstructured or semi-structured interviews. 

Perhaps you’ve already got a design underway and want to interview your users as they interact with it. In that case, structured or semi-structured contextual interviews may work best. 

Consider what you want to learn from your user interviews and go from there. 

2. Write your user interview script (or guide)

How you approach this step will depend on whether you’re conducting structured, semi-structured, or unstructured user interviews.

For structured interviews, you’ll need to write a full interview script—paying attention to the order of the questions. The script should also incorporate follow-up questions; you won’t have the freedom to improvise or ask additional questions outside of your script, so make sure you’re covering all possible ground. 

For semi-structured interviews, you’ll write an interview guide rather than a rigid script. Come up with a set list of questions you definitely want to ask and use these—and your users’ answers—as a springboard for follow-up questions during the interview itself. 

For unstructured user interviews, you can go in without a script. However, it’s useful to at least brainstorm some questions you might ask to get the interview started. 

Regardless of whether you’re conducting structured, semi-structured, or unstructured interviews, it’s essential that your questions are:

• Open-ended . These are questions that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. They require more elaboration from the user, providing you with much more insightful answers. An example of an open question could be “Can you tell me about your experience of using mobile apps to book train tickets?” versus a closed question such as “Have you ever used a mobile app to book train tickets?”
• Unbiased and non-leading . You want to be very careful about how you word your questions. It’s important that you don’t unintentionally lead the user or bias their answer in any way. For example, if you ask “How often do you practise app-based meditation?”, you’re assuming that the user practises meditation at all. A better question would be “What are your thoughts on app-based meditation?” 

It’s worth having someone else check your questions before you use them in a user interview. This will help you to remove any unintentionally biased or leading questions which may compromise the quality of your research data. 

3. Recruit your interview participants

Your user interviews should involve people who represent your target users. This might be existing customers and/or representative users who fit the persona you would be designing for. 

Some common methods for recruiting user research participants include:

• Posting on social media
• Working with a dedicated agency or platform which will connect you with suitable participants
• Recruiting from your own customer or user database

The good thing about user interviews is that you don’t need loads of participants to gather valuable data. Focus on quality over quantity, recruiting between five and ten interviewees who closely match your target group. 

4. Set up the necessary tools

Now for the practical matter of getting your user interviews underway. If you’re conducting in-person user interviews, you’ll need to choose an appropriate setting—ideally somewhere quiet and neutral where the user will feel relaxed. 

For remote user interviews, you’ll need to set up the necessary software, such as Zoom , dscout , or Lookback . Consult this guide for more UX research tools . 

You’ll also need to consider how you’re going to record the user’s answers. Will you use good old fashioned pen and paper, a simple note-taking app, or a recording and transcription software? 

Make a list of all the tools you’ll need for a seamless user interview and get everything set up in advance. 

5. Perfect your interview technique

As the interviewer, you have an important role to play in ensuring the success of your user interviews. So what makes a good interviewer? Here are some tips to help you perfect your interview technique:

• Practise active listening . Show the user that you’re listening to them; maintain eye contact (try not to be too distracted with taking notes), let them speak without rushing, and don’t give any verbal or non-verbal cues that you’re judging their responses.
• Get comfortable with silence . In everyday conversations, it can be tempting to fill silences. But, in an interview situation, it’s important to lean into the power of the pause. Let the user think and speak when they’re ready—this is usually when you elicit the most interesting insights.
• Speak the user’s language . Communication is everything in user interviews. Don’t alienate the user by speaking “UX speak”—they may not be familiar with industry-specific terms, and this can add unnecessary friction to the experience. Keep it simple, conversational, and accessible.

Ultimately, the key is to put your users at ease and create a space where they can talk openly and honestly. Perfect your interview technique and you’ll find it much easier to build a rapport with your research participants and uncover valuable, candid insights. 

What happens next? How to analyse your user interview data 

You’ve conducted your user interviews. Now you’re left with lots of unstructured, unorganised qualitative data—i.e. reams of notes. So how do you turn all those interview answers into useful, actionable insights? 

The most common technique for analysing qualitative data is thematic analysis . This is where you read through all the data you’ve gathered (in this case, your notes and transcripts) and use ‘codes’ to denote different patterns that emerge across the dataset. 

You’ll then ‘code’ different excerpts within your interview notes and transcripts, eventually sorting the coded data into a group of overarching themes. 

At this stage, you can create an affinity diagram —writing all relevant findings and data points onto Post-it notes and ‘mapping’ them into topic clusters on a board. This is a great technique for physically working through your data and creating a visualisation of your themes, allowing you to step back and spot important patterns. 

With your research data organised and categorised, you can review your findings in relation to your original research objectives. What do the themes and patterns tell you? What actions can you take from your findings? What gaps still need to be filled with further UX research?

As a final step, you might write up a UX research report and present your findings to relevant stakeholders. 

Learn more about UX research

We hope you now have a clear understanding of what user interviews are, why they’re such a valuable UX research method, and how to conduct your own user interviews. If you’d like to learn more about user research, continue with these guides:

• A complete introduction to card sorting: What is it and how do you do it?
• What are UX personas and what are they used for?
• What’s the future of UX research? An interview with Mitchell Wakefield, User Researcher at NHS Digital
• user interviews
• ux research

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My Expert Guide to User Interviews

Techniques & Tips with my Interview Cards

User interviews are an important method in our UX researcher toolbox. They help us gain insight about our users and their needs. Well written and well conducted interviews are the key for gathering useful and helpful qualitative data. To help us with that, I created a set user interview and follow-up questions cards and a digital user interview guide workshop board (Miro and Figma). Those tools make writing better interview guides easier. They also help experts plan and conduct user interviews more effectively.

• What are user interviews
• How to plan and conduct user interviews sessions
• Focus on the content of an interview guide
• Tips to write  good and effective interview questions

Using my User Interview Cards to plan and conduct interviews more effectively

• Facilitating user interview sessions like experts
• Tips on how to analyze the data .

What are User Interviews

User Interview is a method to collect information, via direct conversation with users. Interviews can be face to face or remote.

It is one of the main user research methods in our researcher toolbox. It helps us understand user needs, but also motivations, opinions, frustrations, pain points. Unlike surveys, user interviews are live. It is an interactive conversation.

Types of user interviews

There are different types of user interviews:

• Structured : the researcher prepared a guide they strictly follow.
• Semi structured : the researcher prepared a guide as pointers, but the rest is follow up, to have a more natural conversation.
• Contextual interviews: the researcher observes and interviews the participant in their environment. This brings context and gives more insight on the user’s environment. The research asks questions but also asks the participant to perform tasks.

Example of a remote contextual interview, where we asked participants questions about their tasks and activities, and asked them to share their screen so that we could observe them while performing those

When and why do you do user interviews

Most people think user interviews are done at the beginning of a project. It’s true, but not the only time those can help. There are different reasons to do user interviews at different points in a project:

• Discovery phase: at the beginning of a project, to understand user, their goals, tasks, activites, painpoints and needs
• Before you start the design: to inform about user journeys, flows, inform future design decisions (that need to be tested later)
• During usability testing : you ask participants to perform tasks.  But you can also add a few interview questions, especially follow-up ones in there
• After the product is on market : observation and interview to understand usage of the product or feature you launched. And then you can keep on improving it.

How to plan and conduct user interviews

Setup of user interviews.

The ideal user interview involves two UX researchers / designers and one user:

• 1 interviewer who will conduct the interview, ask questions and follow-ups
• 1 note taker who will take notes and usually not participate in asking the questions
• 1 participant in the target audience

You can also have some observers. But, make sure they understand they should NOT say anything. If you can, record the interview and show them recording instead.

Prepare & plan

Preparing user interviews entails recruiting participants from your target audience. Here are the main steps:

• Set the goals of your research (aka prepare a research plan)
• Prepare your interview guide . The interview guide is a structured document with the list of questions you are going to ask. This is the part where my cards will help you. An interview guide is also super useful to note takers, because it gives them a structure for their notes. (more tips on questions in next session)
• Test the guide with colleagues. This part is very important to avoid biases in research
• Schedule the research (dates in the calendar, etc.)

If you want to lear more about biases and mitigate them when creating user interviews check my “ UX Cognitive Bias Cards & Workshop “. It’s a fun way to raise awareness of biases when designing products & services

Recruit participants

I won’t go into full details of recruiting, this deserves an article on its own. But here is the tool long, didn’t read version of what you need to not forget when recruiting participants:

• Explain the goal (without giving too much info sometimes to not bias)
• Explain compensation
• Don’t forget to have a screener (a list of questions to know if they are in your target audience or not)
• AVOID group sessions at all costs. Focus groups are worthless, you end up with the loudest person’s opinion and a bunch of group biases
• Schedule session with the participant
• Send reminders a few days before the session

Structure of the interview guide

Example of an interview guide in word

An interview guide will help you structure your interviews. Remember: it’s a guide. If you feel the need, it’s okay to go beyond this guide to dig into specific topics  that come up with participants. Nevertheless, you still need a solid structure. Mine usually have the following parts

• I remind participants about the context of the interview
• I thank them again
• I make it clear that there is no right or wrong answers
• I ask permission for recording
• I remind them that we can take a break or stop anytime
• Warm up / general questions : Often questions about who the participant is, what is their relationship with the research/products. Those are here to put the participant at ease and help them get used to talking to an interviewer. Also: can be used for rescreening.
• Main questions : they will depend on your research topic. This is the core of your interview and I’ll detail how to write good interview questions in the next section.
• Wrap up and end of the interview : I usually ask participants if they have things to add. And if they have questions for me. I also explain how to get the compensation and thank them. Sometimes, I might ask if they can refer other participants to me.

If you need help, you can get my user interview guide template.

Get User Interview Guide Template

How to write good and effective interview questions

If you need help with the questions, I put together a cheat sheet of interviews and follow up questions . Those are fragments of questions that should help you get started writing your own questions. I organized them in different categories depending on what type of question I want to ask.

Do this when preparing user interview questions

Let’s start with the tips on what you should do, when writing and preparing interview questions.

• Start with warm up questions . Often questions about who the participant is, what is their relationship with the research/products. The goal is to put people at ease, warm them up.
• Start with broader themes then break those down into answerable questions
• Try to focus on past behaviour rather than predict the future
• Anticipate answers and prepare follow ups based on the goal of the research
• Ask Why , 5 times
• It’s okay to have more questions than needed
• It’s a guide : it’s okay to explore outside it participants are say interesting things

Avoid those questions when preparing user interviews

• For example “how satisfied are you with our support team”, it assumes the person was satisfied, what if she was not? 
• Better “how was your experience with our support team?”
• For example “was the product easy to use and affordable”. 
• Better: split the questions in 2 different ones. 
• For example: “Would you prefer to subscribe to a car insurance online or via one of our agents?” This question assumes the person owns a car and needs car insurance. What about people who don’t?
• Fix: make sure you checked that assumption before in the interview, if it’s not true, pass the question?
• For example: “how do feel about our product” could lead to an interesting discussion, or a very short close answer
• Fix: prepare less vague questions on top of that and / or some follow up question ideas if the person isn’t super chatty about that topic
• Sometimes, you will use yes/no questions as screeners for extra interview questions that only apply to a specific set of users.
• If you don’t find a more open question, and go for yes/no, try to anticipate follow-up questions for those: if the person says yes, then we ask this follow up, if they say no, then we ask that follow up
• Avoid asking people what they want / asking them for solutions . Rather try to understand what they are trying to do, to accomplish, their tasks and activities. And then, you can find a way to improve that.
• Be careful about bringing your own biases to the research. Check 52 UX Cards to Discover Cognitive Biases for more on the topic.

43 User Interview and Follow-up question cards

It’s not always easy to come up with effective user interview questions. I was always checking the same books and articles whenever I wanted to build my own guides. So, I came up with a cheat sheet for user interviews and follow-up questions . This was great, but it’s also a long list. To make this more digestible, I turned it into a set of 43 User Interview Questions . They include questions for the interview and follow-up questions. Those are fragments of questions that will help you get started writing your own questions.

I have mostly 3 ways of using my cards in paper and digital format. If you get them and find other ways, please share by email or on social media!

A pocket sized mini library, of ready to use starter questions

I use the cheatsheet and cards as starting points,  to build my own interview guide questions . Both interview and follow-up cards are organized in different categories. I can pick and choose question fragments from those categories. Then, I complete the question based on my research needs. It’s like a mini library of ready to use questions, so it helps me save a lot of time.

You can also use the cards as a small reminder on your desk before or  during the interviews. They can help you remember things you might  forget, especially the follow-up questions.

I created a printable version of those cards, with 2 different printing ways: side by side (if your printer plays nice) or fold-able (if your printer doesn’t align properly the side by side).

Get the 43 Printable Interview Cards

A pop-up workshop, to write user interview guides more easily

When working with teams to build user interview guides, I find it’s easier to not jump straight into MS word. I prefer to first brainstorm questions in a more visual format . My cards are really helpful for this. It can be a “physical”  or a digital brainstorming session. In both cases, here is how I do it:

• Warm up questions
• Main interview questions
• Wrap up questions
• I prepare the cards and arrange them by theme (interview vs follow-up) and question categories. On the table, or on the board.
• I ask people (colleagues, students) to brainstorm questions for all 3 parts, based on our research goals and objectives. The cards act as “starters”.
• Usually, they pick a card, then complete the full question on a sticky note.
• People can either brainstorm questions on their own, and then we put them together. Or, it can be a group session from the start where everyone adds their questions along the way. This is really up to you, you know your team dynamics better than I do.
• Once you all agree on the questions that will make it to the guide, we can create a “clean” MS word version of it. (if you need help with guides, check my user interview guide template) 

If you want to save time, I have already prepared some Miro and Figjam boards. You  can import them into your accounts (you need a paying Miro account though) and work with your teams on those.

Get the Miro / Figjam workshop boards

I also try have my research guide proof read by someone (a researcher or designer) who didn’t participate in the question writting session. This help mitigate different researcher biases we might have brought in the guide.

You usually build your user interview guide questions with other researchers and designers . Those are the people you want to invite in the brainstorming session. I advise you to not invite your stakeholders, or untrained people with zero UX research background. Because, you will end up with biased and poorly written questions . And you want to avoid them bringing their own biases into the research. Also, I have years of experience with shitty questions written by untrained people. Trust me, it will just bring unhelpful data as results.

A study guide, to teach how to write better interview questions

The last way I use those cards is as a teaching tool . I teach how to build better products to design students and professionals in the UX industry.

When I was in school, I used to make small cards with the most important information from my lessons. My friends would borrow them because they liked how short and clear they were. They could keep them in their pockets and study them between classes.  If you are a junior or a student, you can use my user interview cards the same way. Those cards are a very nice little study guide to help you get better and more effective at writing your own questions.

The digital board workshop can also be used as a teaching tool for juniors, mentees and students.

Facilitating user interview sessions like experts 

Wow, you made it here. You are ready, to actually, facilitate the interview! Congrats! If there is one thing you need to remember: a user interview is a conversation! It’s NOT a survey. It’s all about active listening on the

Here are a few tips to help conduct good user interview sessions:

• Start with the introduction , explain there is no right or wrong answer
• After the introduction, have some warm up questions, like background or previous experience. Those are here to help the participant get comfortable with the process.
• Try to put people at ease. Don’t judge , but also don’t fake empathy: be friendly but professional
• Don’t be shy to ask for clarification . Or to play coy: ask about things that might seem obvious. Sometimes the answers can be surprising.
• Answer questions with questions : if a user asks for something try to return the question.
• Try to pick up non verbal cues . It’s harder remotely though, you have to check the webcam, tone and voice of the person
• Get comfortable with silence : don’t rush, pause, let people time to think and answer. . If you struggle with this, my fun advice: count in your head, the same way you count when lightening strikes: 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippis… up to 5 Mississippis. Eventually, you will get comfortable with silence.
• If possible, have a note taker , so that you can be present and actively listen to the participant.
• If you can’t get a note taker, ask if you can record the session . Take minimal notes that help you follow-up, but don’t write a full transcript while interviewing. Be present.
• Make notes of the questions that didn’t work (for future interviews, don’t change that one)

Report and analysis of user interview data

After the interview, I like to make a short note about the most important things I learned while it is still fresh in my mind. Here are some tips to help with reporting and analysis:

• Transcribe the notes (you can use automated tools if you recorded)
• Organize interview content on sticky notes
• Search for patterns and themes
• Review, refine
• You can also build user journeys out of the data, and other UX deliverables that will help you improve your product or service.

Example of an analysis of a user interview sessions: a Miro board with an affinity map of the interview main findings clustered by category and a user journey map that mixes some task analysis content

I won’t enter into the details of data analysis, but here are some resources to help you:

• 4 methods for analysing user interviews – Rick Dzekman
• A Strategic Storytelling Tutorial – Modernist Studio
• Qualitative Coding for UX Research Analysis
• Techniques to Identify Themes in Qualitative Data
• How to Analyze Qualitative Data from UX Research: Thematic Analysis
• Analysing Qualitative User Data – Fr Maria Panagiotidi

User Interviews sound like an “easy and fast” method to a lot of people. Because, it’s sold as “just go grab a few people and ask them a couple of questions” by many articles these days. But, if you want quality quantitative data at the end, to improve your product, you need quality interviews . Having a good research process helps a lot here. And you need unbiased questions. And, if you need help, I have a lot of User Interview Resources available .

The cards I created helped me save a lot of time when building interview guides. They help be more efficient, but also, more consistent. Finally, they encourage me to write better, more unbiased questions. And I think they can help you, and any UX professionals out there.

More resources on the topic

If you want to dig further on the topic of user interviews, you can check those:

• On my blog: A Cheatsheet for User Interview and Follow Ups Questions
• “ Just Enough Research – Erika Hall’s book, she has a whole chapter on interviews and great advice
• If you speak French, Méthodes de design UX (2ed 2018) – Dr Carine Lallemand”
• 12 Ways To Improve User Interview Questions
• User Research Methods : usability.gov still has some of the best resources around interviews and testing
• Interviewing for research
• User Interviews: How, When, and Why to Conduct Them
• 16 tips for better user interviews
• A Guide to Interviewing Users
• User Interviews – a guide to user interview, by, user interviews
• How to ask questions like a UX Researcher
• The Optimizer’s Guide to Conducting User Interviews & Analyzing the Data
• Learning to build the right thing; how you can apply user research to make your product successful
• IDF’s article on User Interviews presents and details 8 types of User Interviews

Other articles you might enjoy:

• A Cheatsheet for User Interview and Follow Ups Questions
• User Experience – Starter Crash Course for Startups
• A User Research and UX Design Starter Kit
• UX Cognitive Bias Cards & Workshop
• A Designer’s Guide to Documenting Accessibility & User Interactions

Published on 24 March 2023

in Expert UX Templates & Resources

By Stéphanie Walter

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The Complete Guide to Conducting UX Research Interviews

Forbes says that every dollar invested in UX yields $100. That’s an impressive 9,900% ROI . However, you can’t create a product for the user if you don’t know what they need. One of the best ways to get data that improves product design is to ask the user.

UX research interviews help researchers, product teams , and UX designers to create better user experiences. The insight you gather helps you understand the needs, wants, and pain points of your target audience.

So, how do you determine who will use your product? Which demographics should you target? How do you design questions that generate the most insight for you? These are some of the questions we’ll be answering.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What is a UX research interview?
• When and why to conduct user interviews
• How to recruit participants for user interviews?
• How to prepare for a user interview
• How to conduct user interviews?
• Framing interview questions to uncover insight
• Turning interviews into research findings

What is UX research?

UX research is the study of user interaction to obtain insights that improve the design process. With UX research, you can create products and solutions that cater to a user’s needs. The primary goal of UX research is to build products for the end-user based on real data not what you think the user wants.

For example, United Airlines increased online ticketing by 200% and doubled the number of daily sessions by conducting UX research to better understand their audience.

UX researchers employ various research methods to gather data and uncover design opportunities. Most researchers start the UX research process with qualitative measures to determine the user’s needs and motivations. However, they also use quantitative methodologies to test their findings.

What Is A User Interview?

UX interview is a qualitative UX research method performed with prospective users of a product during early concept development. It’s a popular technique that allows researchers to cover related topics around the user’s motivations, feelings, and even how they use various products.

During user interviews, the UX researcher asks participants questions around behavior, use of a system, and habits to learn more about a specific topic.

Whereas multiple users are interviewed at once in focus groups, user interviews are one-on-one sessions, usually with several interviewers.

To ensure success, you must define the topic of the interview and choose the right participants for your target group.

When Should You Conduct User Interviews?

Exploration.

According to Interaction Design Foundation , organizations that invest in UX during a project’s concept phase reduce product development cycles by 33 to 50%. Also, the cost of fixing errors after development is 100x more than before development.

Conduct user interviews at the start of the project before you have a clear concept. Data from UX interviews provide a better understanding of different aspects of your user’s daily lives as it relates to the project.

User interviews can also be used when you have an early model. You learn flaws in the product and use the feedback to improve the user experience.

In this scenario, context shows how the product will be used in the user’s domain such as the office, workstation, or daily routine. The insight could form the basis for future user research such as questions to ask in larger surveys.

Observations

After launch, you can combine interviews with observing user actions to see how users interact with your product. Interviews don’t always provide sufficient insight because it’s difficult for users to explain how to use your solution in daily activities.

Contextual inquiry integrates observation and interviews. You ask participants a question and observe them perform an activity with your product. The participant also walks you through their interaction so you can ask follow-up questions after.

Why Should You Conduct User Interviews?

The User Knows Best

According to Acquia, 53% of consumers feel that brands do not meet their experience standards. Dozens of UX research methods are focused on validating ideas, concepts, and designs with a goal to answer the question; “Does this product work?”

The answer is based on a deep understanding of the human psyche, previous knowledge of the problem, and rationality.

However, interviews are more flexible and informal. The structure ensures that you’re getting answers from users to inform product design.

Also, user interviews help you to plug knowledge gaps in your product. Finding information that you weren’t necessarily looking for (good or bad) could make all the difference in a successful product launch.

Gain Deeper Insights Into Topics

If you have a problem that requires further research, user interviews help you to understand the user’s experience or opinion about a concept or product.

It’s a more intimate setting to listen to your target audience talk about an issue and gain a deeper understanding of the topic. They highlight the best features of the product and areas of improvement.

More than just words, you’re listening for clues around how they express themselves when talking about pain points, wishes, and needs.

Humanize Your Product

One of the key steps in conducting user research interviews is to create personas. Each user segment is represented by a name, face, job, and other key demographics you associate with your ideal user.

Each time you conduct an interview, you can check if personas accurately represent your target audience or if there was an important feature you left out when considering demographics.

More importantly, you connect with your audience as humans and understand how the problem affects their daily lives. The insight from such personalized interactions leads to better product integration in their lives.

How to Recruit Participants For UX Research Interviews

1. Decide Whom to Recruit

As a rule of thumb, you should recruit participants that represent your end-users. Characteristics could be as narrow or broad as the scope of the project. However, it’s crucial to have a diverse group and to consider accessibility, such as how disabled users would interact with your design.

To prevent bias, avoid recruiting your colleagues, family members, or close friends. They may feel obliged to say nice things about the product which defeats the purpose of the research.

Also, avoid recruiting many participants from one profession. Interaction Design describes this risk as deformation professionelle .

For example, if you’re creating a robot vacuum and you only invite women 35 and older, you risk alienating men or younger people who may have a need for the product. This demographic provides feedback based on their knowledge of similar solutions and it could lead to dysfunctional products that are unable to please. Make sure you’re capturing participants across all segments of your audience.

However, none of this would be possible if you haven’t mapped out buyer personas to guide recruitment.

2. Build Research Panels

Building a database of prospective research participants requires time investment. However, it creates a sustainable process for finding research candidates quickly. A research panel also ensures that you’re contacting people who are interested in your product.

Use the following research methodologies to help:

3. Through Customer Support

Since customer support teams have direct interactions with customers, they can help you identify participants for research projects. They regularly get feedback from customers who want to suggest future product improvements or complain about features that aren’t working for them.

4. Live Intercepts

Live intercept is an affordable way to capture users in real-time as they’re doing tasks. You can use tools like Ethnio to identify and screen website uses who may be a good fit for your research.

Neilsen Norman used this technique to recruit participants for a moderated usability study aimed at evaluating the success of their content.

Image Source: NNN Group

If users qualify, you can schedule a conversation and include other researchers to observe remotely .

5. Social Media

Social media is a great way to show your target audience that you’re invested in improving product experience as well as promoting the role of research in your company.

If you have a decent to a large following on social media platforms, ask your followers if they would like to participate in your research project.

For example, if your target audience is a group of mums with toddlers, you could search Facebook for relevant communities. Here’s a sample result

Conversely, if the product is for SaaS founders, you could find participants both on Facebook and LinkedIn communities.

Where does your target audience hang out? That’s where you want to be.

6. Search Online communities

Similar to social media, online communities like Reddit and Slack channels have ready-made participants waiting for you.

If you’re creating software to improve product design, you’d want a group of product designers for your user interview. I searched Google for “product design Slack” and this featured snippet came up.

How to Conduct User Interviews?

Before the interview

Screen participants.

At this stage, you have a list of participants, but not everyone is going to be a great fit for your project. Screening user research participants help you find candidates who represent your ideal target audience.

A few tips to help ensure screening success include:

• Define the attributes you want to see in participants such as behaviors, psychographics, and demographics
• Ensure you have a diverse pool of candidates
• Write down your screener questions based on the attributes above
• Ask qualifying questions at the beginning of the survey
• Use a survey tool to build a library of screening questions
• Use accessible language and avoid jargon-speak
• Limit the number of open-ended questions
• Keep the screener short and precise
• Start broad and get narrow as you progress

Determine Incentives for Participants

Incentives are a great way to entice participants for UX research. When determining incentives, make sure it’s commensurate with the time and efforts of participants or you’ll risk a low response rate.

Ensure that people aren’t signing up just for the money or their responses might not be as insightful. An NN Group research found that 63% of incentives are monetary, 13% received a mix of monetary and non-monetary incentives and 9% didn’t receive an incentive.

However, non-monetary incentives tend to be the norm for remote interviews. An Amazon gift card or prepaid visa card ensures participants show up and are engaged during the interview process.

Set Clear Goals

It’s crucial that you have a clear purpose for each interview project.

A few questions to guide you here include:

• What information do I need from our users?
• How will the knowledge inform the UX design process?
• What do stakeholders want to learn from the research?

Make sure stakeholder goals are realistic. Broad goals make it impossible to get feedback that is relevant to your UX design needs.

Prepare for the Interview

Allocate sufficient time for each interview and prep time between interviews. You’ll need to go through your interview guide to feel confident when starting the interview.

Write Down Your UX Research Interview Questions

Never go into a user interview without a discussion guide. This is not the place to “wing it”. A discussion guide is a document that contains a list of questions to ask research participants. It must be tied to the purpose of the research and chosen according to your learning goal.

Preparing a list of questions ensures that you will:

• Include your team’s feedback in the interview process
• Write clear and concise question
• Cover all the questions you wanted to ask, which wouldn’t be possible on the spot

Here are Some User Interview Questions to Get the Most Insight

Discovery Questions

• Tell us about yourself and your background?
• How did you feel before this product?
• What are the problems you want this product to solve for you?
• How did you feel after you started using this product?
• If this company went out of business, what alternative would you use instead?
• What do you like about the product?
• What do you dislike about the product?
• What apps do you use regularly for the tasks?
• What is the hardest part of completing the task?
• Please describe your experience with… or how you use the product?
• How much do you know about this topic?
• How often do you use similar products?
• What exactly do you use the product for?
• Why do you use the product?
• What could be done to make the product better for you?

Questions to Gather User Behavior

• How would you describe your current or past experience with the product, app or website?
• What is the most important task you need to perform with the product?
• How do you navigate to the product? If it’s a website or app, do you use search engines, enter the URL directly or bookmark the site?
• What do you often look for that's missing or hard to find when using this product or application?
• If you had a question about this product do you know who to contact? If yes, whom would you contact?

Question About Past and Future Use

• Can you recall a past situation when you faced a challenge with this problem? What did you do?
• What’s your most memorable interaction with the product?
• If you could picture it, what does the ideal product experience look like?
• What are the most important features of the product?
• How do you usually access the product? Via desktop, tablet, or mobile? (If the product is a software or website)
• What would make you stop using this product?

Specific Task Questions

• Could you show me how you use the product to perform the task?
• Assume that I’ve never used this product before. How would you guide me so I can do it myself next time?
• Walk me through your process for using the product to complete a task
• Do you include other tools alongside the product?
• If yes, can you show me how you integrate the tools and what functions they perform?

Follow Up Questions

Use follow-up questions to dig deeper into a topic. Most times, the participant won’t be clear enough with their answer, and follow-up questions help you to better understand their point of view.

Use the Five Whys Technique to drill down to the root of the problem by asking “why” five times. Without asking “why” you may misinterpret the motivations for the research participant.

However, it’s also important to know when to stop. You’ve uncovered the problem when the question “why” doesn’t yield any useful response and can’t go any further.

Other examples of follow up questions include:

• You said… can you explain a bit more about that point?
• What do you mean by…
• Interesting, could you give me an example or elaborate to help me understand better?
• To be clear, it sounds like you’re saying… is that correct?
• What was it about the product that made you say…
• Why don’t you like…

Question to Close the Interview

• Would you recommend this product to someone else? If yes, why? If not, why?
• Is there any question we haven’t asked that you think would be valuable to our research?
• Is it okay if I reach out with more questions regarding this project?
• Do you have any questions for me?

During the interview

Make your interviewee feel comfortable.

Take a deep breath and smile before you enter the interview room. According to Psychology Today , a smile is a powerful tool to improve your mood and make you feel happy. Since positivity is contagious, research participants will feel more at ease during the interview.

Also, dress casually rather than wearing a formal outfit so it doesn’t feel like a job interview. Tell them you’re here to test a product, not the participant.

With remote interviews, start with small talk to loosen them up. Introduce yourself, tell them about the research, and summarize their rights and terms of participation.

Use a Semi-Structured Interview Format to Encourage Dialogue

In a semi-structured interview, you don’t follow a formal list of questions. Rather than yes or no questions, you ask open-ended questions that allow for discussion.

A semi-structured interview encourages a two-way conversation that leads to a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Since the interviewee is at ease, they are more likely to expand on experiences and techniques that offer better insight.

Resist the Urge to Educate

Curiosity and an open mind are key ingredients to a good interview. You’re there to learn, not teach. Do not judge or correct your interviewee no matter how silly their answers seem. Your goal is to get as much information during the limited time for the interview.

Build Rapport with Participants

Building rapport encourages participants to share their thoughts and opinions. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. You’re walking into a room to speak with strangers. Subconsciously, you censor your thoughts and withhold information because you’re not sure what to say.

Rapport equals a good connection. If participants trust you, they are more forthcoming in their answers.

A few tips to help you build rapport during UX interviews include:

• Be accommodating
• Keep your body language open at all times
• Remove barriers between you and the participant
• Make eye contact
• Show interest

Avoid Leading Questions that Frame the User’s Answer

Leading questions prompt the interviewee to provide a predetermined answer. The question contains information that leads to a biased answer.

Let participants tell you what they think with their words. Don’t fear the silence that takes longer than normal. Sometimes, people need a minute to gather their thoughts and provide a cohesive answer.

It’s important to have a partner with you during the interview. One person is taking notes and out of camera focus. The second person is asking questions and listening to the interviewee.

Practice asking follow-up questions to show the participant that you’re paying attention. Use smiles and head nods to engage physically.

The space between the note taker and interviewer should be clear. During remote sessions, you could turn off the camera for the note-taker so it’s easier for the interviewer and interviewee to focus on each other.

After the interview

Ask permission to use the recording.

If you’re recording the conversation, make sure participants give consent to being recorded as well as how you plan to use the recording. It’s also important that they know they can stop the recording at any point in the interview if they become uncomfortable.

Say Thank You and Wrap Up

After the interview, leave time for questions and thank the research participant for their time. This is polite and offers them a chance to ask questions. If they have any feedback on how you could better conduct interviews in the future, now’s a good time to ask.

How to Analyze User Interviews with Aurelius

After conducting the interviews with all the participants, the next step is to analyze the research . You probably have dozens of notes, videos, and audio recordings to go through. Qualitative data like this could be overwhelming if you don’t know what to do.

This is where Aurelius shines best. Here are a few ways Aurelius helps you make sense of user interview data:

Turn Spreadsheets, Videos, Audio Files and More Into Notes

Create a new project, upload your research notes , spreadsheets, video, and audio recording with the magic uploader. If you’ve got data elsewhere, use the bulk input feature to copy and paste data.

Transcribe your video/audio recording into notes automatically.

Here’s a video showing you how to get notes into Aurelius

Find Information Quickly With Tags

Make sense of your research data with our powerful project tags . Use this feature to find or describe your user interviews quickly.

A few examples of tags to use include:

• Name of interviewee
• Research goals
• Questions asked during the interview
• Name of product or topic

Look for Patterns With Keywords

Looking for patterns or words that come up repeatedly? Use the keyword feature to highlight patterns and find the most used words across all your user interviews.

Highlight Your Major Findings With Key Insights

Use key insights to write down summaries of what you learned from each user interview. It’s a great way to share high level points of the research without asking stakeholders to read all the data.

Make Suggestions With Recommendations

Want to suggest next steps based on key insights? Use the recommendations feature to capture suggestions, action items, or outcomes. Link key insight to provide more context to your recommendations. Aurelius automatically adds your recommendations to the report.

Share Reports And Presentations with Project Stakeholders

Reporting is a breeze with Aurelius. We automatically turn recommendations and key insights from your project into reports that you can edit, design, and share with teammates and project stakeholders. You can customize your reports with documents, text, boxes, and lines.

You can also share a live link to your report, download a pdf or send it via email.

Done Right, User Interviews Help Design Teams to Build User-Friendly Products

You can't build a product for the user without gathering their input. Conduct user interviews to uncover meaningful answers that improve user experience.

Combine user interviews with other research techniques such as user surveys and usability testing to either disprove or validate your hypothesis. When you’ve gathered sufficient data, use Aurelius to sift through the information, find insight, make recommendations and create shareable reports.

Learn how Aurelius can help you organize research data and analyze information from your UX interviews

Home > Blog >

How to write a ux research plan that actually works: 7-step tutorial, saviour egbe, august 29, 2023.

A UX research plan is like a map that will help you navigate the complexity of running a research project. It will help you define your goals, choose the right methods, and collect the data you need to make informed design decisions.

But UX research plans don't have to be boring. In fact, they can be quite funny. For example, one UX researcher I know has a section in his plan called " The Things That Make Me Cry ." This is where he lists all the things that he's learned about his users that make him sad, such as the fact that they often have to deal with frustrating interfaces or unhelpful customer service.

But the primary use of a research plan of course is to make  sure that your research is effective. So, while it’s helpful to have a sense of humor, you also need to be serious about your research.

In this article, we'll consider:

• What a UX research plan is and why it's important
• How to create a UX research plan 
• An example of a well-structured UX research plan and
• A template for a UX research plan you can use to get started

So, whether you're a UX newbie or a seasoned pro, read on for everything you need to know about UX research plans!

What is a UX Research Plan?

A UX research plan is a document that outlines the goals, methods, and timeline for your research. It's a roadmap that will help you stay on track and ensure that your research is productive.

A good UX research plan should include the following:

• A clear statement of the research goals: What do you hope to learn from your research? What are the specific questions you're trying to answer?
• A description of the target audience: Who are the people you're designing for? What are their needs and pain points?
• A selection of research methods: There are many different research methods available, so it's important to choose the ones that are right for your goals and target audience.
• A timeline and budget: How long will your research take? How much money will it cost?
• A plan for data analysis and presentation: How will you analyze your data and communicate the findings to others?

Why is a UX Research Plan Important?

A UX research plan is important for several reasons. It helps you:

• Stay focused and avoids wasting time and resources.
• Ensures that your research is relevant to the needs of your users.
• Get buy-in from stakeholders & align on the goals for the project.
• Provides a framework for organizing and analyzing your data.
• Helps you communicate the findings of your research to others.

How to Create a UX Research Plan

Creating a UX research plan is an important step in ensuring that your product or service is user-friendly and meets the needs of your target audience. Here are the essential steps to create a research plan that drives meaningful insights and successful user experiences:

Step 1: Alignment & Requirements Gathering

Research rarely will happen in a vacuum. Usually you are working with a team—product, engineering, design, for example. 

When the need for a research study arises, the first thing you want to do is meet with your team to understand the questions they're trying to answer.

Depending on how formally set up your research practice is, you may even want to supplement this step with a Research Request document where stakeholders can explain the key questions they'd like to answer, why they're important, and any constraints (budgets, timelines) they're working with.

Step 2: Define Your Goals

Once you've gathered your data, the next step is to clearly define & write out your goals. What do you hope to learn from your research? What specific questions are you trying to answer?

Here are some things to consider when framing your goals:

• What are the business objectives for your product or service? Are you trying to grow active users? Or reduce churn? What should the final results of this research project help you do?
• Who are your target users? These are the people you’d like to learn more about.
• What do you want to learn about their behavior and preferences? This will help you determine your research questions. Ideally the answers to these questions should also tie to your business goals so there’s a clear line between what you’re trying to learn and what that learning will do for the company.

Once you’ve thought about and drafted the answers to these questions, make sure to follow the below steps before starting interviews:

i. Assess Internal Data and Identify Research Needs

Before you start collecting new data, take some time to assess any existing data you have. This could include analytics, customer feedback, or previous research findings. This will help you identify any gaps in your knowledge and determine what areas need to be explored further.

Sometimes you’ll find you already have the answer to your research question in-house—saving you weeks of research effort and thousands of dollars of investment!

If you’re trying to build a repository to help you do this more effectively, check out this definitive guide on research repositories .

ii. Link Research Goals to Business Objectives

It's also important to link your research goals to the business objectives of your organization. This will help you justify the time and resources that will be required for your research. By demonstrating how your research will help you achieve your business goals, you'll be more likely to get the support you need.

As a bonus, once your research is complete, you can go back and track its impact against these business goals. This will help you build a case for your own work and the research practice at your company.

As you proceed through Step 1, keep in mind that your research goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). This framework will help you ensure that your goals are well-defined and actionable.

Step 3: Identify Your Target Audience & Plan a Recruiting Strategy

Knowing your audience is essential for creating a UX research plan that delivers relevant and actionable insights. In this step, we'll talk about how to define your target audience and plan a recruiting strategy for this set of users.

The target audience you’re considering this research study may overlap with your standard target users, or you may want to speak with a subset of this group.

For instance, if you’re doing a research study on why users churn, speaking to a regular active user won’t help. You’ll need to define and recruit users who can actually answer your questions well—in this case it could be “users who have churned in the last 2 weeks”.

When defining the audience for this study, think about whether your target user falls in a specific category based on one of these characteristics:

• Demographics:   This includes basic characteristics, such as age, gender, location, and occupation.
• Behaviors and habits: Are you interested in users who have or have not conducted certain actions on your product? For research on how well your Slack integration works, you may want to speak to users who have already installed it, for example.  
• Needs and use cases: Sometimes one product can have multiple use cases. For example, a transcription product could be used by researchers, or journalists, or students trying to capture their class notes. Which use case or needs are relevant to your research study?  
• Payment type: In today’s world products may have free, freemium / trial, or paid users and each of these groups may behave differently. Think about whether you need one or all of these user types as part of your research.

Now that you know who you need to reach, you also need to think about how to reach them.

Recruiting, as we all know, is a major pain point for (most) researchers. There are some ways to speed it up though.

If you’re running research for a B2C product or an easy to find B2B cohort, you may want to turn to an external recruiting software like UserInterview.com or Respondent.io. There are also local agencies to help you find more local audiences in international markets. 

If you are trying to recruit via an external paid channel like this, make sure to budget it in your research plan. These channels are very quick to set up research calls with, but they do come with an added cost.

If you’re running research with a niche B2B audience or are defining your audience based on behaviour on your product (e.g., user who churned in the last 2 weeks), you may need to use internal recruiting methods. This means reaching out to your own users via email, intercom, or via your sales / support team.

If you are recruiting existing customers, make sure to budget in the time it takes to recruit these users. It may take a few days to weeks to gather the relevant user emails and schedule calls, although paid incentives for research help this move much faster.

If you are planning to recruit your own customers, use our Ultimate Guide to Recruiting Your Users for Interviews and Usability Tests . This article has templates for outreach, incentive payment options, and many tactical tips to help you streamline internal recruiting.

Remember, the accuracy and relevance of your research findings depend on the quality of your participants. Take the time to identify and engage users who genuinely reflect your intended audience. This will help you create a research plan that generates insights that drive impactful design decisions.

Step 4: Choose Your Research Methods

Choosing the right research methods is necessary for getting the most out of your UX research plan. Before kicking off your study, make sure to review the possible ways you can answer your research question as well as any constraints you face regarding time, money, or tooling.

If you’re not sure which methods exist, read through this article on UX Research Methods . This article provides an overview of the different methods, so you can choose the ones that are right for your project. It covers everything from usability testing to card sorting, and it includes practical advice on how to conduct each UX research method effectively.

When you’re actually selecting the right method out of the available options, here are the key questions you need to ask yourself: 

• Your research goals: What do you hope to learn from your research? The methods you choose should be aligned with your specific goals. For example, if you need to deeply understand user motivations, a user interview is much better fit than a survey.
• Quantitative vs. qualitative: Do you want to collect quantitative data (numbers and statistics) or qualitative insights (in-depth understanding)? Different methods are better suited for different types of data. If you need to know the percentage of users using Zoom vs GoogleMeet, a 5-person user interview won’t get you that data but a 100 person survey with a representative sample might.
• Resources and time: How much time and money do you have to spend on your research? Some methods are more time-consuming or expensive than others. For instance, an ethnographic study where you travel to see your users is obviously more expensive and time-consuming than a 30-minute remote user interview.

By considering these factors, you can choose a combination of research methods that will help you understand your users better.

Step 5: Define your timelines & budgets

Now that you know your target audience (and therefore recruiting method) and your research methods, you can define the timelines and budgets your stakeholders care about.

• Timelines: How long will it take to conduct your research? This will depend on the methods you choose, the number of participants you need to recruit, and the amount of data you need to collect. For example, user interviews can typically be conducted within a few weeks, but usability testing can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the number of participants and the complexity of the product or service being tested.
• Budgets: How much money will you need to conduct your research? This will depend on the methods you choose, the number of participants you need to recruit, and the cost of data collection and analysis. For example, user interviews can be conducted for a few hundred dollars, but usability testing can cost several thousand dollars, depending on the number of participants and the complexity of the product or service being tested.

Step 6: Identify your assumptions

Sometimes without realising it, our research study comes packaged with a set of assumptions about who users are and what they want.

Before kicking off your study, it’s important to identify these assumptions in writing and align on them with your team.

For instance, if you’re running research on how to improve a Slack integration, your in-built assumptions may be:

• Users already use this integration
• It’s worth improving this integration further

Once you’ve laid out these assumptions in advance of your research, you can check them against existing data and keep them in mind when you’re reviewing your research findings.

For example, if analytics data shows that no users use your Slack integration, it may call into question the research you’re running today or change the audience you speak to about it.

Instead of speaking to existing Slack integration users, your audience may need to be companies that have Slack but have not downloaded your Slack integration.

Your research questions may also shift from “Why do you use the Slack integration?” to “Why not? ”

In general, taking a moment to review research assumptions helps you be more aware of them throughout your research study.

Step 7: Define the research questions

This is a pivotal phase in the UX research process. It's when you define the questions that will guide your data collection efforts. These questions will be your compass, directing your research toward meaningful insights that drive product improvements.

Here are some tips for crafting and structuring your research questions:

• Make sure each question is aligned with your overall research objectives. This will ensure that your findings address the core goals of your project.
• Make your questions clear, concise, and specific. Ambiguity can lead to varied interpretations and muddy insights.
• Frame your questions from the user's perspective. Use language that aligns with your target audience to ensure your questions are relatable.
• Avoid leading questions. These are questions that nudge participants towards a particular response. Aim for neutrality to get real insights.
• Use a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions allow participants to provide detailed responses, while closed-ended questions offer predefined answer choices.
• Structure your questions logically, moving from broader inquiries to more specific ones. This will help participants to follow your thought process.
• Limit the number of questions. You want to get comprehensive insights but don't want to overwhelm participants with too many questions.
• Cover the core areas relevant to your project. This could include user pain points, needs, preferences, expectations, and perceptions.
• Pilot-test your questions with a small group of participants. Their feedback can help you to identify unclear or misleading questions.
• Make sure your questions are relevant to the research methods you will be using. For example, usability testing may focus on task-oriented questions, while interviews explore broader experiences.

Here are some examples of well-defined research questions:

1. Usability testing:

• How easily can users navigate the Looppanel account setup process?
• What challenges do users face when uploading their recorded calls to Looppanel?
• How intuitive is the process of setting up Calendar integration on Looppanel?

2. Interviews:

• Can you describe a recent experience you had with the Looppanel customer support?
• What motivated you to sign up for Looppanel for your user research needs instead of other platforms?
• In your view, how does the platform assist in taking your user interview notes effectively?

By carefully defining your research questions, you can ensure that your data collection efforts are focused and meaningful. This will help you to gather the insights you need to improve your product or service and deliver a better experience to your users.

Step 8: Align with your team

Now that you’ve thought through the basics, it's essential to get buy-in from your team and stakeholders on the final plan.

A lot may have happened between your first requirement-gathering meeting and when your plan is finalized. Take the final plan to stakeholders and make sure they are aligned:

• The research question you’re going to answer
• How your study ties to business goals
• Which users you’ll be engaging with
• Which method you’ll be using
• What your timelines look like
• What your budget looks like (if applicable)

This step is really important because if there’s a lack of alignment between you and your key stakeholder, you may end up with findings nobody is going to act on.

Example UX Research Plan

Here is an example UX research plan for improving the onboarding experience of a mobile app. Use this example as a guide to help you create your own plan!

Psst… we also have a template below that you can copy and use!

Project Title: Research study to improve onboarding experience on DuoLingo 

Business Goal: We want to increase the activation rate of new users on the app.

Project Goal(s) :

• Identify key drop-off points on the onboarding flow
• Identify why users are dropping off at these points

Target Users: People from the 15-40 age group in North America who have not used Duolingo before.

• MixPanel analytics data to identify existing drop-off points for users
• Usability testing with the think aloud protocol to understand why users are dropping off at those points

Timelines: The study will run for 4 weeks:

• Week 1: Analyzing existing analytics data & recruiting participants
• Week 2: Running usability tests
• Week 3: Analyzing results
• Week 4: Presenting findings

Budget (if applicable): Anticipated spend of $500 on recruiting.

Key Research Questions These are the research questions we’ll be gathering data on :

• At which point(s) in the onboarding process are users most likely to drop off?
• What are the common reasons users cite for discontinuing the onboarding process?
• How do users perceive the clarity of instructions during the initial setup stages?
• Are there any specific usability issues that lead users to abandon the onboarding flow?
• How do users' prior experiences with language learning apps impact their expectations of DuoLingo's onboarding?

UX Research plan template

We’ve also created a UX Research plan template you can use easily duplicate and use for your own work.

Click here to get Looppanel's UX Research Plan template.

This template contains sections for:

• Project Title
• Business Goals
• Project Goals
• Target Users
• Research Methods
• Timelines & Budgets
• Key Research Questions

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Writing an effective guide for a ux interview.

February 28, 2021 2021-02-28

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In This Article:

Introduction, step 1: write your research questions, step 2: brainstorm interview questions, step 3: broaden your questions, step 4: fill in for unaccounted research questions, step 5: arrange your questions, step 6: prepare additional probing and followup questions, step 7: pilot your guide.

In the discovery phase of product development, user interviews are often used to capture important information about users: their backgrounds, beliefs, motivations, desires, or needs. Typically, the interviews carried out at this stage are semistructured (referred to as “depth interviews” by market researchers) — they generally have a predefined structure, but also allow the interviewer the flexibility to follow up on significant statements made by participants.

In a semistructured interview, the interviewer uses an interview guide (also referred to as a discussion guide). Unlike an interview script — which is used in structured interviews — an interview guide can be used flexibly: interviewers can ask questions in any order they see fit, omit questions, or ask questions that are not in the guide.

A good interview guide paves the way for a deep, free-flowing conversation with participants. (Obviously, the way you conduct the interview will also be important, but that’s another article!) Interview guides should include a few concise, open-ended questions to encourage participants to tell their stories. These will be followed by carefully crafted, probing questions to uncover motivations or beliefs behind certain reported behaviors or utterances.

Constructing a good interview guide can be tricky and time-consuming. It’s not uncommon to spend a full day crafting one. However, it’s important to have one to ensure you get the most out of your interviews. Without an interview guide you run the risk of:

• Asking leading questions as you try to think of questions on the spot
• Not covering topics relevant to your research questions in each interview

Ultimately, without an interview guide, you are in danger of compromising the validity of your data. Here are some steps meant to help you create an interview guide if you’re new to this practice.

Sometimes the research questions are clear and obvious. However, sometimes they’re not. Maybe you’ve realized you need to speak to users because you don’t know anything about them. Good! But what do you want to find out from them? These are your research questions. Write these out first before working on your interview guide, as they will shape your interview questions. Below are some examples of research questions:

• What are users’ expectations in this situation?
• How do users make a decision in this situation?
• How have users managed to solve this problem in the past?
• What aspects of this product do users care most about, and why?

Next, note down all interview questions that come to mind. It doesn’t matter whether they are good or poor — you’ll deal with that later. You can use mind maps , digital whiteboards, or a simple list — whatever works for you! Sometimes, further research questions pop up here. That’s fine; add them to your list of research questions.

It’s typical after step 2 to have a long list of mostly closed questions. Those kinds of questions wouldn’t make for a good interview because they won’t allow for unanticipated stories and statements to emerge and can limit your ability to build rapport with the participant. (Rapport is important if you’re looking to gather accurate, in-depth information from your participants.)

Review your list of questions and ask yourself, for each interview question, is there a broader, more open-ended version of that question that you can ask instead?

For example, consider the following closed questions that could be asked in an interview with an employee.

• Do you work in an office?
• Is the work mostly desk-based or paper-based?
• Do you have to attend meetings during the workday?
• Do you work in a team?

The above questions could be answered by asking the participant to describe a typical day at work. It’s likely that in doing so, the participant may cover all or many of the above. If the participant has not covered everything, then some of these can be asked as follow-up questions.

Example questions, that prompt the user to recall a certain event and are similar to those used in the critical-incident method , are excellent for gathering stories and unanticipated statements. For instance, imagine you’re conducting an interview to learn about people’s experiences cooking at home. The following example questions provide the opportunity for participants to tell many different stories and give you a glimpse into their lives.

• Tell me about the last time you cooked at home.
• Tell me about a time where you cooked something new.
• Tell me about a time when you cooked something that turned out well.
• Tell me about a time when you cooked something that didn’t turn out as you hoped.
• Tell me about a time when you were thinking about cooking something but decided to get takeout instead?

Align each interview question to your research questions. If you have research questions that are not addressed by any of your interview questions, fill in the gap by crafting some more interview questions. Repeat step 3 if needed.

The interview guide can include your research questions. Some researchers like to remind themselves of the aims of the research by displaying these either at the top of the guide or alongside the interview questions.

To make the conversation flow in a logical order and seem natural think about the best order for your questions . For example, if you’re talking about an experience people have had, it makes sense to move in a chronological order. If the experience has set phases (such as discover , choose , purchas e, use , review ) that you might have documented in a user-journey map , service blueprint , or experience map then you may want to align your questions to these phases. That’s not to say you can’t depart from this order in the interview if you need to!

You should also think about preparing some warmup questions that are open-ended and easy to answer to build rapport at the beginning of your interview. For example, “Tell me a little about yourself” is a typical opening question which gets the participant talking. Any questions that require reflection should be featured later in your guide; introducing them too early could be overwhelming and you might get stereotypical responses, as participants haven’t had a chance to recall events, feelings, and form judgments.

Once you’ve ordered your questions, go through each one and prepare followup questions meant to provide you with additional detail and clarification , such as “Where were you when this happened?”, “When did that happen?”, “Tell me why you did that?”, and so on.

You can include probing questions , too, to help you to remember to ask them — for example, “Tell me more about that”, “Tell me why you felt that way”, “Why is that important to you?”

Piloting your guide will give you an idea of:

• Questions you should ask but aren’t yet included in your guide
• Questions that need rewording
• Whether the question order works
• Whether you will have time for all your questions

Recruit a pilot participant and give yourself enough time to make some changes. It’s okay to make updates to your guide throughout your interviews, but the point of piloting your guide is to fix any glaring issues before commencing research.

A guide will provide focus to your interviews and ensure that they are successful. Your interview guide should consist of broad, open-ended questions that allow participants to tell you about their experience in detail. These questions will be accompanied by many probing and followup questions, used to capture further details and gain clarification. You can download an example of an interview guide to refer to as you create your own interview guides.

Example Interview Guide (PDF)

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User Interviews: Guide To An Insightful UX Interview

Mária Ilona Horváth

How to do a good user interview? Do you REALLY know your users' pain points or are you just seeing the top of the iceberg? Let's face it: all products and research processes have new challenges. We, at our   UX company , give you our process and essentials to good user interviews.

In this post we cover:

• Planning an interview
• Conducting the interview
• Interview analysis
• + 7 Essentials to a good user interview

What are user interviews and when to use them?

A user interview differs from an everyday conversation.

Mainly in its aim and the roles each person plays. An interview has a well-defined and previously agreed upon topic or question the interviewer wants to understand, explore or better specify by talking to people and listening to them.

Accordingly, the UX researcher talks with people who in some way belong to the target group connected to their topic, researched product, service or broader problem during a UX interview.

When deciding on the method of interviewing, you don’t only need a clearly defined topic and a good idea for your target group. You also want a convincing reason for choosing this technique, perhaps real curiosity, a lack of data from other sources or the impossibility of using other methods .

A good interview results from deep and well-researched interest and openness. To simply validate existing beliefs, concepts or already collected – perhaps quantitative – data, consider other options. You can share surveys or do desktop research instead of taking the time to conduct interviews. Find our summary on different UX research methods here.

Do user interviews when you need exploration

Do user interviews if your question or problem needs further exploration or you need insight into how others relate to your topic. Also, if you want the option to ask back and react to what your respondents have to share.

Interviewing works great in the early phase of developing a concept or product. Also, it can really provide insight when researching existing solutions by asking people’s opinions on and experience with it.

User interviews provide an understanding of how your target audience talks about an issue in a more intimate setting. What do they mention as their main problems, needs, wishes and joys regarding a process, service or solution? Also, it can reveal how they express themselves when talking about such factors.

When preparing products and thinking about users, you can also create personas. To learn more, read our post on personas here

User interviews collect what people say about a topic and how they say it during the interview session. Do not confuse that with how they think or feel about the question in general. It takes time and practice to differentiate these realms easily.

Planning can start once interviews have clearly proven themselves the best method for researching a topic.

User interviews: planning and preparation

1. consider the time and the resources.

No golden rule says how to plan these elements, as the difficulty of the topic and that of recruitment can influence this.

Once you have everybody on the same page about interviewing, start developing a research plan and specifying the main questions to answer in connection with the topic.

Calculate sufficient time for interviews, especially if you work in a bigger or remote team. Poorly prepared questions or dissimilar interviews can ruin your efforts.

2. Choose a structure: semi-structured or unstructured

Once you have an idea about the most important questions, choose a structure. We won’t discuss structured interviews here as they resemble surveys more than explorative interviews based on the approach introduced this far. So go for semi-structured or unstructured interviews.

We recommend semi-structured user interviews, as leading and analyzing unstructured ones really take a lot of time and practice. Also, if you want to share the workload within a team, semi-structured interviews and such guides leave less room for misunderstanding.

Wonderful, but what is a semi-structured interview? A semi-structured interview operates with a set of questions and a proposed order for them as defined in the user interview guide.

The interviewer has to prepare and have the willingness to change these questions and add new ones if the interview situation requires. The interview guide serves as an invaluable asset in finding the golden path between an overly strict structure and an overly vague organization for the interview.

A semi-structured interview guide leaves room to improvise and helps with tips on how to handle unexpected situations or directions of the talk. Remember what we’ve said about the nature and worth of interviews: You would not have expected some of the most important and interesting findings.

Writing a UX research plan and interview guide also proves helpful in collecting and evaluating assumptions and any possible bias. Pay attention to them, as unreflected-upon assumptions and researchers’ bias can interfere a lot with results.

You can write a UX interview guide and recruit participants simultaneously. However, we write interview guides before talking to participants, not simply because of the problematics of bias but also in order to take the right approach to this easily. Instead of writing a guide to the first respondents, we want to find respondents to our questions and guide.

3. User recruitment: You can do it!

Recruitment might be difficult. Luckily, tips and ideas abound on how to find respondents for your interviews. Here, we will only stress (relieved by CBD isolate powder )one very important detail that can separate a really insightful interview from average ones.

Let’s say you have already tried all the databases you might have. Keep GDPR in mind, though! You posted calls on social media, wrote ads, offered incentives and subscribed to platforms, asked friends and family and still have difficulty finding (enough) respondents.

Again, some extremely difficult topics can make recruitment tough. We’ve gone through that. Still, at this stage, you might want to go back quickly and check your UX research plan, topics and an interview guide. Even if you can’t make systematic changes at this point, sooner make small adjustments to the plan than compromise requirements by recruiting somebody who does not really fit but seems “almost OK”.

4. Schedule your user interviews

If you’ve successfully found your respondents, keep in mind that success does not only depend on the actual interview. The way you first contact interviewees will affect them. Your tone and style will impact their relaxation levels once you actually start talking about your questions.

Depending on the organization of a user experience research project, different people may contact and schedule the interviews from those conducting them. In such a case, make sure within the team that the respondents join the interview well informed.

Also, when asking them to participate, you will inevitably tell them something about the topic and the goals of the interview. For one, it stands as an ethical requirement.

Always state the aims of the project and summarize participants’ rights so they can give informed consent to participate. It makes it easier for you, too. If respondents have an idea of what will happen during the interview, it reduces the risk of scheduling an unsuccessful or cancelled interview.

Still, the possibility remains for cancelled or less insightful interviews. Therefore, we at UX Studio always calculate with more interviews than absolutely necessary for our UX research goal.

5. Remote user interviews?

Some situations prevent personal interviews, otherwise the ideal choice of user research method. Life just doesn’t work that way. When conducting remote (e.g. phone) interviews, keep in mind that some factors and response effects might have a stronger influence on respondent answers in such a setting.

For example, people tend to finish remote interviews sooner than in person. People on the phone agree easier and answer in shorter sentences. They lose patience. Also, you can’t observe non-verbal reactions and body language in as much detail as when in the same room. It makes sense to adjust your interview guide and planning accordingly, like to formulate questions very clearly.

Conducting the user interview

1. before the user interview, prepare.

Calculate sufficient time for the interview. You will have to concentrate, as it makes for a tiring process. Also, spend time preparing before every single interview even if you’ve already conducted interviews focusing on the same topic.

Why? Because you need some time before the actual interview to go through your interview guide to get calm and confident enough when starting the interview. Also, check the respondent data quickly so you can make minor changes in the guide to make it more relevant. This way, you can greet your respondents naturally and kindly, which proves not just nice but it boots up your interview process!

2. Make interviewees feel comfortable

When the users arrive – and after offering a coffee or glass of water – we at UX Studio usually guide them to the interview room while making a few warm-up remarks or asking some casual questions. Meeting the respondents at their location of choice really makes them more comfortable!

Here, you can also see why remote interviews can get more complicated. You lose all these options to create a relaxing atmosphere.

Once you have everything set and your respondent has relaxed enough, quickly introduce the research you’re working on, thank them for the interview, and summarize participants’ rights and the terms of participation. After this point, signing an informed consent form (and if necessary, a confidentiality disclosure) and discussing the details of a possible recording follows.

3. Do the interview like a smooth conversation

Start the interview with a warm-up session. Discussing rights, signing forms and switching on a voice or video recorder interfere with your interviewee’s state of mind. Find our tips on recording a UX interview here.

Depending on the difficulty and sensitivity of the topic and the scheduled length of the interview, this warm-up phase can go shorter or longer. But we’ve found that it usually takes five to seven minutes.

Try to make the transition from this part to your central topic smooth. Again, consider the interview guide your friend and build a logical bridge between your warm-up questions and your main topic.

This is key to conducting insightful user interviews. Not only the questions follow in a meaningful order but the interviewer’s tone of voice, body language and gestures signal interest in all the answers, not only in those marked as important in the interview guide.

This way, the respondent can participate in a normal conversation where they do not feel tested on or experimented with. Aim to really understand users. Let them talk, not just answer.

Don’t just focus on open-ended research interview questions about their central problems, frustrations and pain points regarding the topic. It involves more than simply embracing silence, trusting your respondents and efforts thus far. You recruited these people because they have something interesting to tell you; give them time and room to do so.

4. Listen and ask clever questions

If they start telling you something that seems irrelevant at first, bear with them a bit. The detour they make might lead you to the diamond you are mining for with interviewing. We can’t stress enough: Discovery interviews explore stuff you would have not thought of otherwise.

Don’t misunderstand, take the lead during the interview and keep track of time but remain flexible and truly curious about what the respondents have to share.

Especially so, as some interviews prove to be tricky. Don’t worry,  we’ve met less talkative respondents, too. You can always use little tricks to make them more engaged in the conversation. You can find out more by guiding the respondents to share more. How? If you feel that your respondent did not tell you everything you needed to know, use probing or summarizing questions.

If you simply repeat what they just said, people tend to add more details to it. Also, you can check if you really understand the point they are making.  Silence is a great tool, too. If you are patient enough and don’t rush to ask another question to fill the silence, people usually make an extra effort to answer your initial question. Additionally, you can always point out nicely that they are experts and you need more details or further explanation of the topic.

When you have asked all your UX research questions and got all the answers you needed, move on to the last part of the interview.

Closing the conversation in a skilled way is not simply polite but can add valuable insight to your results, too. For that reason, we always ask respondents about the interview experience. It helps them (and us!) come out of interview mode and improves the user experience research process.

Also, ask them if they have any thoughts connected to the topic which you hadn’t raised. You may collect ideas to develop for the next interview. Lastly, express gratitude!

5. After the interview: not quite finished

Your respondent’s interview process has finished there, but another difficult part begins for you now. First, right after saying goodbye to your interviewee, write down your notes, remarks and impressions. What makes it so important and beneficial to sit down and collect your reflections? Because the experience is fresh, you remember things you might not when listening to your recording.

Also, it adds to your notes taken during the session. When you take notes while listening to your respondent and thinking about your next user research question, you have to concentrate on the here and now. Collecting the ideas, reflections and analytical problems that occurred to you during the user interview should go into your after-session notes.

These notes also open the door to the analytical process following the interview. Even though we believe analysis starts when you start thinking about the UX interview questions to ask, your collected data requires another form of systematic analysis.

Analysis of the user interview

Just like with the topic of recruitment, we will mostly focus on sharing some tips. Still, you can find lots of material available online and off on analyzing interviews. A well-prepared and conducted semi-structured interview will offer many insights and possible directions of analysis. Just choose one (or a few) to pursue.

Embrace the specifics of qualitative data and do not try to understand it with a quantitative mindset. It doesn’t only involve numbers, figures or even facts. Among other things, it deals with experience, memory, expression, expectation and wishes.

However, working with qualitative data requires a systematic approach. We would also add that analyzing and sharing qualitative data convincingly takes a certain kind of discipline.

As the analysis and the resulting suggestions build on interpretations of what you heard during the interviews, have confidence in your findings. Do not only share some quotes but detail your reasoning on why you understand this or that quote this or that way. As we see it, the interview process really ends here for the interviewer.

Summary: 7 essentials to insightful user interviews

1. Plan: go deep, do a research plan and an interview guide, take into account the time and the resources as well

2. Provide a calm atmosphere for the interview: even offering tea and coffee can do the trick. A relaxed user is an open user

3. Prepare and be confident as a researcher: know the interview guide, but know the subject to be able to be flexible and go around it

4. Prepare and inform the respondent: do the UX for your own interview, pave the path to an open conversation

5. Take notes and collect impressions: actions sometimes speak louder than words

6. Embrace the specifics of qualitative data

7. Practice and be patient: be willing to improve your interview skills, even if it takes time

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Unpacking User Interviews: Turning Conversations into Insights

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How to conduct user interviews: Step by step + best practices

It’s time to sit down and listen up to what users have to say about your product.

Now that you’ve made the decision to run user interviews, there’s likely one big question on your mind: how can you conduct user interviews in a way that guarantees the in-depth insights you need?

While interviews may seem like sitting down for a chat, there’s more to this UX research method than meets the eye. Pushing beyond a simple conversation can garner you rich, descriptive feedback to inform practical UX decisions.

In this chapter, we’ll share how to conduct user interview in six key steps, to ensure you’re making the most of your users’ time and responses. We’ll also cover off some industry best practices to elicit the most valuable, actionable responses from your participants.

Uncover quality, qualitative insights in a matter of moments

Maze simplifies the interview process by facilitating remote moderated interviews, with a suite of AI-powered tools to help organize interview names and automatically analyze your results.

How to conduct user interviews: step-by-step

Interviewing users is a lot like ice skating—it looks easy, but requires careful planning, practice, and balance.

From recruiting the right participants, preparing interview questions, navigating the conversation, and, perhaps most importantly, analyzing the responses—conducting interviews is a detailed process.

We’ve outlined the six key steps on how to structure user interviews to help you get the insights you need from your user interviews .

1. Set your goals

Start by defining what you want to achieve from this research process. Are you launching a product and want to understand user expectations? Are you validating a new functionality or feature for your product? Are you collecting customer feedback to optimize the user onboarding experience?

These research objectives will guide your research in the right direction and ensure everyone’s on the same page. What’s more, all other aspects of planning this research—like the type of users you interview and the questions you ask—are closely tied to your objectives.

Hillary Omitogun , UX Research Consultant and Founder of HerSynergy Tribe , shares how she prepares for user interviews:

“I always start with a research plan . This has clear goals that align with the business's north star. I also create an interview guide. This includes questions I plan to ask, which are typically gathered from myself and team members, like a PM or designer. It also outlines how many people I'll be interviewing and who they are.”

Let’s look at a quick example of a good research goal:

Imagine you're building an AI-powered design tool to simplify and accelerate the UX design process . You want to test your assumptions about user behavior and refine your foundational ideas for this app with user interviews. So, the objectives of your user research process will be to identify:

• The shortcomings of current design tools
• Primary use cases for AI-powered design features
• Users’ expectations from an AI design solution

With goals like these, you’re looking at holding semi-structured, generative user interviews to find out more about user experiences and expectations.

💡 Head to Chapter 1 to learn more about the different types of user interview and which is right for your research project.

2. Prepare your interview questions

Once you're clear on the research project's purpose, you can start outlining your interview scenario. This will include a basic script for how you want an interview to pan out. Divide this plan into segments for every theme or topic you want to cover.

Coming up with the right research questions involves a lot of effort—and your first set of questions likely won’t be the same as the questions you ask your last interviewee. You have to constantly refine the questions based on people's responses to get valuable insights, so consider question creation a continuous effort.

Haley Stracher , Design Director and CEO of Iris Design Collaborative , notes what to be wary of when you’re drafting user interview questions:

“Avoid asking leading questions at all costs. I use a lot of unbiased and open-ended questions like ‘how did this feel to you?’, instead of ‘did you like this process?’ This will get you the best data you’re looking for and avoid any cognitive biases creeping in.”

✨ Not sure where to start with user interview questions? Check out the Maze Question Bank for over 350 ready-to-go research questions, tried and tested by our own research team.

3. Recruit participants for your user research

When you’ve done this initial legwork, it’s time to find the right candidates for your interviews. Before you start searching and recruiting research participants , study your target audience and create ideal user personas for your product.

These fictional personas will tell you the characteristics to look for when shortlisting candidates. They'll also help in filtering out those who don't fit the bill, saving you the effort of interviewing the wrong users.

You can also go back to your goals and define the types of target users you want to interview. For example, if you want to introduce your product to a new market, you can interview prospective customers that fit your personas to understand their expectations for your product. However, if your goal is to assess the effectiveness of your self-serve support setup, then you have to talk to your existing users.

Here's the tricky part: finding the right users that match your defined personas. There are many ways to recruit participants for UX research , including:

• Spreading the word in relevant communities with project details and incentives
• Amplifying the message on social media channels and among your network
• Leveraging guerilla testing tactics to approach your target audience
• Checking out participant databases or working with recruitment agencies

An example post calling for research participants

For example, the Maze Panel offers a quicker and more convenient option to find testers for research. You can browse a massive pool of over 280 million participants and narrow your search based on demographic and campaign engagement metrics.

What’s more, with Reach , you can go beyond recruitment to implement your complete outreach workflow from start to finish. Analyze individual profiles, create and send custom recruitment campaigns, and make your research process a breeze.

4. Introductions and build rapport

Before conducting your interviews, ask participants to fill out a research consent form. UX research ethics and best practices require informed consent to ensure participants have a complete understanding of their role in the study, its expected outcomes, and how their contributions will be used.

Once you’ve taken this written consent, you can start the interview by introducing yourself and sharing more context about the conversation.

Without delving into too much detail, briefly explain what the interview is for and your role in this project. Then, start with some lighter questions to learn more about each participant before moving on to your main points.

Pay attention to your body language, whether it's an in-person interview or a remote one. Your actions can make a huge difference in the interviewee's comfort and confidence. Consider these pointers when chatting with interviewees:

• Open with a smile and shake hands with interviewees (if in person, of course)
• Call interviewees by their names to build a connection
• Share some info on yourself to put them at ease e.g. your job role
• Be mindful of your body language and how it influences their perception of you

Overall, you want to maintain relaxed eye contact, nod frequently, and use empathetic, person-centered language.

5. Conduct the interview

This is what you’ve been working toward—it’s interview time. Both you and your participant should be ready to move into the interview stage after some introductions and chit chat.

Switching from small talk to the interview should be seamless—you don’t want participants to suddenly feel like they’re under pressure.

Ease into the interview; it’s even worth considering whether there’s a way you can link your first question to some expected small talk. This way, you know you’re consciously transitioning into the interview, but the interviewee feels it’s a natural progression of the conversation.

How your interview will pan out depends on the type of interview you’re conducting. If it’s structured you’ll likely rattle through the questions one at a time, but if it’s unstructured it’ll feel more like an open conversation. If it’s semi-structured, you’ll find yourself somewhere between these two.

Before starting, I make it a point to set clear expectations and answer any questions the participants might have.

Hillary Omitogun , UX Research Consultant

It’s a good idea to keep your interview goals front and center when conducting interviews. You can’t get interview moments back—and you don’t want to find yourself wishing you’d asked an insight-packed follow-up question once you’ve completed the interview.

As with the introductions, keep your body language and tone positive and open. Keep participants engaged by using their name from time to time, and try to keep the interview as conversational as possible.

🛑 Remember to hit record Taking notes is a great way to ensure you don’t miss anything throughout the interview, but don’t overdo it—you don’t want interviewees to feel like they’re under a microscope, and getting too stuck on notetaking can mean you lose rapport or miss important follow-up questions.

Recording your interview is an easy way to keep track of everything that’s been said, and allows you to be present in the moment, before going over the participant’s answers with a fine-tooth comb after the interview. It also means you have a permanent record of the interview, can share it with colleagues, and can use user interview tools to speed up analysis.

Alternatively, if you prefer pen and paper, Hillary suggests inviting a colleague to take notes during the interview: “In the past, I’ve had a PM or designer join user interviews to help take notes. I have a note-taking guide and template I share ahead of time—note-taking isn’t as simple as just relaying what the user said in the interview.”

6. Wrapping up

As a final step, debrief participants about the interview and thank them for participating. You can also encourage them to ask any follow-up questions about the project or get additional information.

This is also a good time to confirm the participant’s continued consent. Although they gave it at the start, they now know the full context of the interview and are in a better position to give complete, informed consent.

You should also discuss the next steps at this stage—like the incentive you promised or the project timeline. This quick debriefing round aims to keep them informed about the study and end on a positive note.

💡 What’s next?

We cover user interview analysis in Chapter Four—jump ahead to learn how you can turn your user interview data into actionable insights.

6 Best practices for conducting user interviews in UX research

The steps above are how you conduct user interviews, but running user interviews isn’t just about going through the motions—you’ll need to work within a framework of UX interview best practices to ensure you’re getting quality insights.

Think of the six steps to conduct user interviews as the seeds you plant, and these six best practices as the fertilizer sprinkled on top to enhance growth and make sure those plants are as vibrant as possible!

Here’s how to fertilize your user interviews to ensure they produce the in-depth, focused customer insights you’re looking for.

1. Get consent

Getting participants' consent is non-negotiable in UX research interviews. This written consent has a twofold purpose: first, it informs users of what they're interviewing for and how their data will be used, and secondly, it ensures researcher accountability when it comes to protecting participants.

Researchers of any kind have a duty to protect research participants from any type of psychological or physical harm. During user interviews, you’re held to the same ethical standards as any other researcher; obtaining informed consent is a key step in the user interview process.

2. Prepare, prepare, prepare

Nobody wants user interviews to fall flat—it’s a time and energy investment for both researchers and participants. Whether it’s clear notes to yourself, pre-prepared user interview questions or visual aids, ensuring you’re fully prepared is crucial for conducting successful user interviews.

One example is focusing your interview around journey flow. Journey flows are visualizations of a process users go through in order to complete a task with your product, service, or platform. Angling your user interview around a journey flow provides structure to the interview, and helps you pinpoint each decision a user makes from initial product contact to feature interactions.

An example journey flow

3. Respect your user’s time

Interviews require considerable time and effort from both sides. Even after participants have agreed to the interview, make sure to confirm specifics like the topic of the interview, where it will be hosted (online or in-person), the expected time commitment, interview process, and any other details.

This does two things:

• It makes your interviewee feel respected and at ease, increasing the honesty and openness of their answers
• It increases the chance of your interviewee participating in follow-ups and future UX research projects

4. Make your interviewee comfortable

A good way to elicit authentic responses is to make users feel relaxed during the interview. Instead of hosting the session as a strict interview, carry it out like a relaxed conversation. Acknowledge user responses to help them feel confident and comfortable. Interviews can put participants under pressure—do your best to put them at ease.

That being said, Hillary highlights balancing warmth with remaining impartial:

“At the start of my career, I tried to be friendly by offering positive feedback like 'Oh, good information.' I realized this could unintentionally lead or bias the participants' responses, encouraging them to just repeat what they think I want to hear.”

5. Watch participant body language

While a user will be verbally answering your questions, be sure to pay close attention to subtle cues they communicate through body language. You want to understand what users do, not just what they say.

Reading body language complements verbal responses, giving you a clearer picture of your interviewee’s experience. It helps you identify the emotions that accompany the user's answers and gauge how comfortable or receptive they are during the interviews.

Here are a few body language signs, and what they can mean:

• Averted eye contact: Indicates your interviewee feels bored, deceived, or uninterested
• Raised eyebrows: usually reflects a state of surprise, uncertainty, or fear
• Mirroring: If a interviewee mimics your body language, it's a sign of rapport and agreement, indicating the interviewee is comfortable and engaged

⚠️ Read social cues with caution Being mindful of nonverbal cues is helpful but it's crucial not to overestimate them. Our stereotypical understanding of body language doesn’t take into account neurodiversity, cultural differences, or even simple nerves.

For example, many neurodivergent people may avoid direct eye contact or fidget, but this doesn’t mean they’re not listening or feel bored. An anxious user may stutter their words, but it’s not a reflection of their feelings about the product.

6. Offer incentives to participants

For many UX teams , preparing a questions list and conducting a user interview won’t be the most challenging part of the process—the challenge will be recruiting the right participants for the job. Offering an incentive will entice and encourage users to partake in your interview process.

When choosing a reward for users, consider the complexity of your interview and participant demographics. A 30-minute interview on general customer feedback won’t warrant the same reward for an hour-long stint, delving into in-depth usability issues.

Some incentives to choose from include online vouchers, product discounts, exclusive access to new features, or a free trial for a paid plan.

Bonus best practice: Avoid leading questions

Leading questions guide your interviewees toward specific answers through suggestive question phrasing. This leads to inaccurate insights and unsuccessful user interviews.

We’re talking more about this in the next chapter of this guide, which focuses on writing user interview questions that get insights. However, we couldn’t fail to mention it here—as it’s a crucial aspect of successful user interviews.

How to select the right tool for user interviews

User interviews are a very accessible research method—it’s part of why they’re so valuable. In their simplest form, they require little more than a pen, some paper, and an inquisitive mind.

However, one thing's for sure—a user interview tool makes user interviews a whole lot easier, especially when done at scale. From organizing participants, automating admin tasks and recording interviews, to generating transcripts, analyzing conversations, and creating reports—a great selection of user interview tools can take your interviews to the next level.

Here’s what to add to your wishlist when browsing the options (which you can do in chapter five):

• Tools with participant management options: If you don’t have enough users to conduct interviews at scale, a good tool will help you find the right participants for your studies and hone in on your target audience with filter capabilities. Top-tier tools will also help you build a database of participants, making it easy to reach them with targeted research campaigns.
• Tools to record and transcribe interviews: Recording and automatic transcription are two of the most useful benefits of interview tools; helping you capture, store, and review user responses. This qualitative data is the basis for your insights, so you won’t be able to reach actionable findings without a transcription or a high-quality audiovisual recording.
• Tools to uncover and report on insights: An engaging data-report is more than just a cherry on top of your painstaking user interview efforts. It’s what draws stakeholders to buy in to your research. With customization and data visualization options, a good interview tool will make your data easy to read, setting your team on the right path to implementing solutions.

A single tool won’t make or break your interviews, but find the right match will certainly aid you on your journey towards actionable insights—and you’ll get there a lot faster, too.

Up next: Writing and asking user interview questions

Conducting user interviews isn’t about running through a list of questions and hoping for the best—the way you approach the user interview process is key to increasing the quality of insights you collect. Stick to these steps and best practices, and you’ll be well on your way.

Next up in our user interviews guide, we’ll be diving deep into your interview questions. Read on for the different types of user interview questions, how to ask them, and how to write your own.

Frequently asked questions about how to conduct user interviews

How long should a user interview take?

The timeframe of an interview is generally between 30 and 60 minutes. This gives you enough time to make introductions, delve into key concepts, and ask follow-up and probing questions for relevant and helpful responses. However, the length of a user interview will ultimately depend on your chosen subject matter’s complexity

How do you conduct a good user interview?

Conducting a good user interview involves setting up your goals, recruiting participants, creating a list of questions, making introductions, and building rapport to help interviewees feel at ease. Finally you’ll ask the questions you’ve prepared with follow-ups to extract descriptive insights from your interviewee.

How to write user interview questions

How to Write a User Interview Plan For Better & Faster Results

• May 5, 2022

User interviews are an important part of designing and building great products. But if you’re not careful, they can also be a major time suck. 

Most user research begins with interviews. But not all user researchers know how to create an effective interview plan. This leads to wasted time and effort, which could impact the results of your research project. How do you write an effective user interview plan? How can you ensure that your user interviews will be successful and provide the information you need?

In this post, we’ll show you how to write a user interview plan and share some tips for conducting user interviews effectively. By following these tips, you’ll be able to get faster, better results from your user interviews. So what are you waiting for? Start writing that interview plan!

What Is A User Interview?

A user interview is a conversation between a researcher and a user during which the inquirer asks questions concerning the user’s requirements , goals, and actions. User interviews are usually held in person but may also be done over the phone or via video chat. Video chats for user interviews have increased since the covid outbreak. People who use Zoom increased from 59% in 2021 to 70% in 2022 . 

User interviews are a type of qualitative research, which means that they’re used to gather insights that can’t be quantified. Qualitative data is often more useful than quantitative data when it comes to understanding user behavior.

What Is The Goal Of User Interviews?

The goal of user interviews is to understand the user’s needs, goals, and behavior. User interviews can be used to gather data about a specific task or event, such as how a user completes a purchase on an eCommerce website. Or they can be used to gather data about a broader topic, such as how users interact with mobile apps.

User interviews are typically conducted at the beginning of a project before any design work has been done. This allows researchers to gather insights that will inform the design of the product.

User interviews can also be conducted after a product has been launched, in order to understand how users are actually using the product. 

How To Write A User Interview Plan

Before you can conduct user interviews, you need to write an interview plan. An interview plan is a document that outlines the goals, methods, and logistics of a user research project.

The goal of the interview plan is to ensure that the user research is conducted efficiently and effectively. A well-written interview plan will help you stay organized and focused during the research process.

Here’s what your interview plan should include: 

1. Project Goals

Firstly, establish the goals of the user research project. What are you hoping to learn from the user interviews?

Are you trying to understand how users interact with a specific feature on your website? Or are you trying to understand the overall user journey on your website?

Your project goals will determine the scope of your user research. Establishing clear goals at the outset will help you focus your research and avoid collecting unnecessary data.

2. User Criteria

Next, you need to establish who you will be interviewing. You should start by defining your target audience. Who are the users that you want to learn from?

Once you’ve defined your target audience, you need to establish criteria for selecting interviewees. This will help you ensure that you’re interviewing the right people.

For example, if you’re trying to understand how new users interact with your website, you might want to interview users who have recently signed up for your website.

3. Questions

After you’ve established the goals and criteria for your user research, you need to write a list of questions that you want to ask during the interviews.

Your questions should be focused on the specific goal of your user research. For example, if you’re trying to understand how users complete a purchase on your eCommerce website, you might ask questions about the user’s thought process as they add items to their cart and check out.

Now that you’ve established the goals, criteria, and questions for your user research, you need to decide how you will conduct the interviews.

User interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or via video chat. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages.

In-person interviews are typically the most effective method for conducting user research. They allow you to build rapport with the interviewee and pick up on nonverbal cues. They also allow you to show the interviewee prototypes or design concepts, if necessary.

However, in-person interviews can be logistically difficult to arrange. They also require more time and effort than other methods of conducting user research. 

Video chat interviews are the most convenient method of conducting user research. They don’t require the interviewer and interviewee to be in the same place, which makes them easy to arrange. Due to the rise of covid, other forms have become popular such as using Zoom and Google Meet for user interviews. tl;dv is a tool that can make your user interviews much easier, and faster and help you not just “question” your users, but also connect with them as you pay more attention to them. tl;dv will take care of recording your sessions, automatically transcribe them and you can have notes along with timestamps as your converse with your users. It makes life for a user researcher much easier. When all is said and done, you can quickly review full sessions or jump to specific sections with the timestamps you create. Sharing from tl;dv is even much easier! Try tl;dv now for free . 

However, video chat interviews can be less personal than other methods. It can be difficult to build rapport with an interviewee over video chat, and you might miss out on nonverbal cues.

5. Logistics

Once you’ve decided on a method for conducting your user research, you need to establish the logistics of the project.

If you’re conducting in-person interviews, you need to establish a location for the interviews. For phone interviews, you need to establish a time and method for contact (e.g., email, phone call, etc.).

With video chat interviews, you need to establish a time and method for contact as well as a video conferencing platform (e.g., Skype, Google Hangouts, etc.).

6. Schedule

After you’ve established the logistics of your user research project, you need to create a schedule. When will the interviews take place? Who will be interviewed?

It’s important to create a schedule for your user research project in advance. This will help you ensure that the interviews are conducted in a timely manner and that you have enough time to analyze the data.

7. Analysis

After you’ve conducted the user research interviews, it’s time to analyze the data. What did you learn from the interviews? You should start by creating a report of your findings. This report should include a summary of your findings as well as recommendations for further action. Share your findings with your team. This will help ensure that everyone is on the same page and that they understand the results of the user research. In order to increase the quality and impact of your reports, you should back up your analysis and recommendations with evidence from your user research sessions. tl;dv records and transcribed your meetings, so that you can mark important AHA moments of the research and attach them to the report, for maximum clarity of conclusions, and amplify the voice of the user to all stakeholders and decision-makers, such as the engineers, the product team and the designers

How Do You Formulate A User Interview Plan?

Qualitative user research is an important part of the product design process. It allows you to gain insights into how users interact with your product and understand their needs and wants.

One of the most important parts of qualitative user research is the interview. A great interview can provide a wealth of information about your users. But how do you create the best user interview? By planning. With a laid-out plan, you can create the right user interview script to use for your master plan. You can also make use of a user interview template based on tour designed agenda for your sessions. 

However, conducting a great interview is not easy. It takes practice and experience to master the art of interviewing.

Know Your Goal

Before you start creating questions for your user interview, you need to know what you’re hoping to achieve. What is the goal of the interview? What do you want to learn from the users?

By understanding the goal of the interview, you can ensure that your questions are focused and on track.

Keep It Simple

When creating questions for your user interview, it’s important to keep them simple.

Don’t try to ask too much in one question. Instead, focus on one specific aspect of the user’s experience.

It’s important to be direct when asking user interview questions.

Don’t beat around the bush or try to trick the user into giving you the information you want. Instead, ask a straightforward question and let the user answer.

Avoid Yes/No Questions

Avoid asking questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Instead, ask open-ended questions that require the user to elaborate on their answer. By asking general instead of leading questions, you can get natural responses from your interviewees. This is the basic tenet of the book, The Mom Test written by Rob Fitzpatrick. 

Be Prepared

It’s important to be prepared when conducting a user interview.

This means having a list of questions ready in advance. It also means being familiar with the product and the user’s experience with it.

By being prepared, you can ensure that the interview goes smoothly and that you get the information you need from the user.

User interviews are an important part of the product design process. By asking the right questions, you can gain insights into how users interact with your product and understand their needs and wants.

By following the tips in this article, you can ensure that your user interviews are effective and efficient.

User interviews are an important aspect of the design and development process, but they can also be a major time waster if you aren’t careful. You’ll improve your chances of impressing the interviewer and getting the job by preparing ahead of time for your UX interview. Get interviews done faster and reviewed the smart way with tl;dv . 

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User Interview Template

Capture relevant details from discussions with current or potential customers. The user interview is a great tool to gain insights and improve your product.

Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies

About the User Interview Template

The user interview template is where you can keep track of your user interviews, adding the questions, answers, and any other information you might find helpful to build a profile of your user and conduct user research.

What is a user interview?

User interviews are a UX research technique where researchers ask users questions about a topic. You can use the user interview template to prepare your questions and take note of the interviewee’s responses. It allows your team to quickly and easily collect user data, and it’s also a great way to learn more about who uses your product.

When to conduct user interviews

Product teams, UX designers and writers gather background data to understand how people use technology. It’s a way to take a snapshot of how users interact with a product, understand user objectives and motivations, and find users’ pain points.

It’s an important step when developing or iterating an existing service or product. That’s why marketing, business, and development teams often find it helpful to conduct a user interview to gain insights and develop better strategies and solutions.

Benefits of conducting user interviews

There are many advantages to conducting user interviews, especially if you are developing a product or improving a service. It allows researchers to understand the user experience, gives a clear picture of a product’s usability, and enables companies to gather demographic or ethnographic data that can be used to create  user personas .

Who should implement the user interview template

Two UX researchers, product managers, or other product team members generally conduct user interviews. That doesn't mean that other people can’t join the process; marketing researchers and strategists may also take part in the interview as listeners and take notes to develop a user persona.

How to structure your user interview

Start explaining the purpose of the interview. Tell the interviewee what you plan to cover and what you’re trying to accomplish in the interview. Then explain how user data will be used afterward.

Afterward, start your interview. Make sure you’re not priming the interviewee at any point during the conversation. For example, if you’re trying to figure out how people are using your podcast app, ask them, “Do you use any podcast apps?” rather than “How often are you using our podcast app?”

A good practice is to create space for answers to flourish, and by that, we mean asking open-ended questions so they can elaborate on their answers. Another tip is to try keeping the interview short, under an hour.

At the end of the interview, thank the user for coming and give them the opportunity to ask any questions of their own.

Common user interview questions

Tell me about your background.

How often do you use [similar products in our space]?

When you are using these products, do you encounter any challenges?

What are the most important tasks you perform while using these products?

Is there anything you wish you could do with these products which is currently not possible?

Are there any ways these products do not support your current needs?

Set up your own user interview template

The user interview template is designed to capture the most relevant information from your user interviews. In addition to the details of the interview and interviewee, you may want to include questions asked and topics covered, as well as user observations and feedback and key takeaways or action points for your team.

The user interview template can also be referred to later and used as a strategic tool to develop a complete  customer journey map . Share your user interview template with your team and stakeholders and ask for feedback or brainstorm based on your findings to gain insights.

How do you create user interview questions?

Depending on what you are trying to discover, you can direct your interview differently. When creating user interview questions, some standard practices include asking open-ended questions that require more than a single word answer and questions that make you understand your user’s tasks. Another important thing to remember is to ask about their feelings, opinions, and pain points regarding a specific topic. You can also ask them to compare services or explain how they compare to another similar experience.

How many participants do you need for user interviews?

You can conduct the interview yourself, but UX and research teams commonly gather together to observe and make notes. Ideally, you would have one more person with you at the interview.

Get started with this template right now.

Breakout Group Template

Works best for:.

Education, Team Meetings, Workshops

Breakout groups provide an excellent opportunity for teammates to have candid conversations and connect on a more intimate level than is possible during a broader meeting. When you’re in a large group setting, it can be difficult for people to feel safe or comfortable speaking up. In a smaller group, participants can feel safer sharing their ideas. Since the group is more intimate, teams are empowered to participate rather than observe.

Research Template

Education, Desk Research, Product Management

Teams often need to document findings from usability testing sessions and customer interviews into a systematic, flexible user research template. Collecting everyone’s observations into a centralized location makes it easier to share insights company-wide and suggest new features based on user needs. Research templates can be used to record quantitative or qualitative data.. When it’s your job to ask questions, take notes, learn more about your user, and test iteratively, a Research Template can help you validate your assumptions, find similarities across different users, and articulate their mental models, needs, and goals.

Design Sprint Kit Template

Agile Methodology, UX Design, Sprint Planning

With the right focused and strategic approach, five days is all it takes to address your biggest product challenges. That’s the thinking behind Design Sprint methodology. Created by Tanya Junell of Blue Label Labs, this Design Sprint Kit provides a set of lightweight templates that support the Design Sprint’s collaborative activities and voting—and maintains the energy, team spirit, and momentum that was sparked in the session. Virtual sprint supplies and prepared whiteboards make this kit especially useful for remote Design Sprint Facilitators.

5 Whys Template

Design Thinking, Operations, Mapping

Ready to get to the root of the problem? There’s no simpler way to do it than the 5 Whys technique. You’ll start with a simple question: Why did the problem happen? Then you’ll keep asking, up to four more times, until the answer becomes clear and you can work toward a solution. And Miro’s features enhance the approach: You can ask team members questions in chat or @mention them in comments, and use color-coded sticky notes to call out issues that are central to the problem at hand.

Define Your Product's Target Audience

Product Management, Planning

Too broad an audience? Or trying to target too many audiences? This is a certain path to product failure.

Azure Architecture Diagram Template

Software Development, Diagrams

The Azure Architecture Diagram Template is a diagram that will help you visualize the combination of any data and build and deploy custom machine learning models at scale. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, designed to provide cloud-based services such as remote storage, database hosting, and centralized account management. Use Azure Architecture Diagram template to build sophisticated, transformational apps.