Distinguish Research Questions From Interview Questions

The key to interviewing well is to distinguish what you are trying to learn (your research questions) from what you ask in the interview (your interview questions). Most product teams could generate an infinite list of research questions. There is always more to learn about our customers. We see some teams solve this by generating multi-page discussion guides. But this strategy assumes that you’ll be talking to customers only occasionally, therefore, you need to ask them everything right now. Instead, assume you’ll talk to customers every week, and focus on what you need to learn at this moment in time.

In any given interview, you’ll want to balance broadly exploring the needs, pain points, and desires that matter most to that particular customer and diving deep on the specific opportunities that are most relevant to you. Every customer is unique, and, no matter how well you recruit, you may find that your customer doesn’t care about the opportunity you most need to learn about. We don’t want to spend time exploring a specific opportunity with a customer if that opportunity isn’t important to them. Our primary research question in any interview should be: What needs, pain points, and desires matter most to this customer?

Once we’ve explored the opportunities that matter most to the customer, we can dive into the specifics of any of those opportunities. You may have specific opportunities in mind, but you’ll want to let your participant set the direction of the interview. Remember, what matters most to your customer trumps what you need to learn.

Since we can’t ask our customers direct questions about their behavior, the best way to learn about their needs, pain points, and desires is to ask them to share specific stories about their experience. You’ll need to translate your research questions into interview questions that elicit these stories. Memories about recent instances are more reliable than our generalizations about our own behavior or our answers to direct questions.

Instead of asking, “What criteria do you use when purchasing a pair of jeans?”—a direct question that encourages our participant to speculate about their behavior—we want to ask, “Tell me about the last time you purchased a pair of jeans.” The story will help us uncover what criteria our participant used when purchasing a pair of jeans, but because the answer is situated in a specific instance (an actual time when they bought jeans), it will reflect their actual behavior, not their perceived behavior.

Finding the right story question can be challenging. The scope of the story that you’ll want to elicit will change throughout your discovery process. For example, if you work at a streaming-entertainment company and you are trying to increase viewer engagement, you might ask, “Tell me about the last time you watched our streaming-entertainment service.” This question will help you learn about pain points and challenges with your product.

But you may want to widen the scope. You might say, “Tell me about the last time you watched any streaming entertainment.” This question will elicit stories about your product but also stories about your competitors. You could broaden the scope even further to, “Tell me about the last time you were entertained.” This might elicit stories about going to a movie theater, attending a concert, socializing with friends, and much more. This type of question is a great way to uncover what your product category (e.g., streaming entertainment) competes with.

You’ll want to tailor the scope of the question based on what you need to learn at that moment in time. A narrow scope will help you optimize your existing product. Broader questions will help you uncover new opportunities. The broadest questions might help you uncover new markets. The appropriate scope will depend on the scope you set when creating your experience map (see Chapter 4).