User interviews and ethical research practice

A user interview is a one-to-one conversation to understand someone's experiences, goals and context. It is the most common qualitative research method, and one of the easiest to do badly.

Ask about the past, not the future

People are poor at predicting what they will do and good at describing what they did. "Would you use a feature that...?" produces polite yeses. "Tell me about the last time you planned a trip with friends" produces a story full of real detail, workarounds and frustrations.

The interview guide

An interview guide lists the topics and opening questions you want to cover. It is a guide, not a script: follow interesting threads. A common shape is a warm-up, a few open story prompts, deeper probing on key moments, and a wrap-up.

Follow-up questions

The best insights come from follow-ups: "What happened next?", "How did you decide?", "Can you show me?", "You said it was annoying. What made it annoying?" Avoid leading questions ("Wasn't that frustrating?") and do not explain or defend your product. Silence is useful: wait a few seconds after an answer and people often add the important part.

Ethics and consent

Participants must know what the research is for, how it will be recorded, who will see it, and that they can stop at any time without consequence. Get consent before recording, store notes securely, remove names from what you share, and delete recordings when you no longer need them. Pay people fairly for their time. Take extra care with vulnerable people and sensitive topics.

Interviews reveal the context behind behaviour: the reasons, workarounds and constraints that analytics cannot show. A handful of good interviews can change the direction of a project. Done badly, with leading questions and opinions about hypothetical features, they produce false confidence. Ethical practice protects participants and the credibility of your work.

A designer researching a shared-calendar app for families plans six interviews of 45 minutes. The guide opens with "Walk me through how your family planned last weekend." One parent describes a whiteboard in the kitchen, a group chat and a paper diary, each used for different things.

The designer follows up: "Why does the dentist appointment go on the whiteboard but not in the chat?" The answer, "Because the kids can see the whiteboard and the chat gets buried", reveals a need for visibility to people without phones. That insight would never have come from "Would you use a shared calendar?"

Each participant signs a plain-language consent form, receives a voucher, and is told recordings will be deleted after analysis.