Interviewing Users
The field manual for research interviews: framing, guides, question technique, field behavior and analysis — from someone who has run thousands.
Core ideas
The interview is a distinct professional skill, not a chat. Rapport is engineered: framing, consent, the first easy questions, your silence discipline.
Ask about the past, not the future. Stories about the last specific occurrence carry detail and truth; speculation about the future carries self-image. “Would you…” questions get polite fiction.
The guide is a checklist of goals, not a script. Write research questions first, derive interview prompts from them, and let the conversation wander through the guide rather than march.
Follow the participant’s language. They say “annoying” — you ask what made it annoying that day. Their words are doors; generic probes are walls.
Shut up longer than is comfortable. The five-second pause after an answer is where elaboration lives. (2nd edition adds remote-interview practice throughout.)
Use together with
UX Research track, lesson 4 applies the book’s technique chapter; the quiz tests the classic mistakes it warns about.