Module 3: Problem

Discovery
Product Management Career Accelerator
Program
Agenda

User Interview Process

Research Enquiry

Discussion Guide

Recruiting Participants

Conducting the Interview

Synthesizing learnings
 User Interview Process

Frame a Create a Recruit Conduct Synthesize

research discussion participant the the
enquiry guide s interview learnings

A well scoped Create a Recruit A 30-60 min Distill the

research discussion participants live learnings
question that guide that will that belong to moderated from the
you want to the structure the target session that interviews
pursue for the segment may be and create a
interview using recorded report
screeners

More reading: https://www.userinterviews.com/ux-research-field-guide-chapter/user-interviews

Research Enquiry
● A research enquiry is the scoped research question that you want to
pursue
● For generative research, it will usually be to understand the needs,
behaviors, and pain points of the identified target segment of the
market
● For example
○ Identify the problems that tier 1 car owners face with keeping
their car clean
○ Identify the unique movie watching needs of the multilingual
Indian audience
Discussion Guide Tips
● Get to know the participant well
○ Ask enough questions about their background; Understand who they are, what they do, what a typical
day in their life looks like so that you can build their persona

● Keep the interview conversational

○ Follow a semi structured guide where you have a list of key questions but give yourself room to veer from
the script

● Ask open ended questions

○ Open ended questions allow the user to elaborate more as opposed to close ended questions that end in
yes or no
○ For example, instead of asking “Do you have a full time job”, ask “What do you do for work”

● Don’t ask leading questions

○ Leading questions will bias the user to answer what you want to hear instead of being truthful
○ For example, instead of asking “Would you like to make payments on WhatsApp”, ask “How do you feel
about making payments on WhatsApp”

● Make room for follow up questions

○ Follow up questions allow you to dig deeper into the user’s answers
○ For example, if the user gives an interesting answer to “Do you like using WhatsApp”, follow up with “Why
do they like WhatsApp”

● Avoid hypothetical questions

○ Hypothetical questions may lead the user to give imaginative answers not grounded in reality
Discussion Guide Example
● Questions to know the participant
○ Tell me about yourself? Who are you? Who do you live with? What do you do for work? What
do you do for fun? What did you do last weekend? Walk me through a typical day in your life.
● Questions to set the context
○ When was the last time you watched something on an OTT platform? How often do you
watch? Who do you watch with?
● Questions to dig in
○ What are your favorite type of shows you watch on an OTT platform? Can you give some
examples? Walk me through the entire journey of how you choose a show and watch it.
○ What do you think about movies created in your regional language? When was the last time
you watched one? Why did you choose that movie over other options? What do you like or
not like about them? What do you think separates them from other types of movies?
Recruit Participants
● Identify the target segment
○ Use the target segment identified in the STP or a similar analysis
○ Identify the key traits of the target user that can be used to create a
screener
● Create a screener
○ Create a set of questions using which you can screen the participants to
ensure they belong to the target segment
○ Leverage a service like UserTesting.com or UX research vendors to recruit
participants
● Decide the number of interviews
○ A smaller number of users (5-10) works for a qualitative study
○ You can stop once you see no new insights coming from interviews
Recruit Participants Examples
● Identify the target segment
○ Living in a tier 1 city, Genz/Millenial, who enjoys watching local movies
● Create a screener
○ Q1: Which of these languages can you understand (Proceed only if one or more
regional languages are selected)
■ Language 1
■ Language 2
■ Etc.
○ Q2: How many movies have you watched in the last one month? (Proceed only if 2+)
■ 0-1
■ 2-5
■ 5+
○ Etc.
Tips to Conduct the Interview
● Record the session and take notes
○ Transcribing or video recording the entire session is preferrable
● Make the participant comfortable
○ If the participant does not feel comfortable, they will not give you true
insights
○ Start with the ice breaker questions to warm them up
● Keep the interview conversational
○ Know when to drift away from the discussion guide and when not to
○ Probe deeper into the participant’s answers to understand why they’re
saying what they’re saying
○ Always ask the participant to speak their mind
● Wrap up the interview and thank the participant for their time
Avoiding pitfalls in Interviews
● Participants may not always do what they say
○ Understand when this is happening and probe the user to talk about things they have done as
opposed to what they think they would do
○ Do some form of behavioral user research to cover for this issue
● Participants may feel obliged to say good things or come across as useful
○ Remind the participant that it’s not helpful if they are simply nice to you
○ It helps to not give them the monetary benefit upfront
● Participants may leave out important things that they feel are trivial
○ Frame your questions in a way that forces them to go through all the details
○ Ask them to speak their mind so they don’t omit things
● Not all participants are equally forthcoming
○ Try to remove such participants during screening
○ If this is a recurring problem, try using focus groups as participants tend to be more
comfortable in a group setting
Synthesize the Learnings
● Synthesizing the learnings involves converting the raw interview notes
into actionable insights
○ Distill the key learnings from the interviews by removing the
superfluous information
○ Build on patterns observed and join the dots using information from
other sources where necessary
● Ensure the various degrees of needs, problems, goals, pain points along
with behaviors, personalities, traits, characteristics are fully captured
○ A user journey map and user personas are a good output of user
interviews for generative user research
 User Personas

More reading: https://uxplanet.org/guide-to-creating-user-personas-c62586bb7f0a

Glossary
● Screener: A screener is a tool used in research to identify and select a specific group of participants who meet certain criteria for a study.
Screeners are often used in qualitative research, such as focus groups or in-depth interviews, to ensure that the participants are representative
of the population of interest.

● Discussion guide: A discussion guide is a document that is used to structure and guide a focus group or in-depth interview. It contains a set of
questions or prompts that are used to elicit information and opinions from the participants. The purpose of a discussion guide is to ensure that
the conversation stays on topic and that the researcher obtains the information they need to answer their research question.
Sample discussion guide.