The accuracy of your data collection is crucial in qualitative research. It is vital that nothing is lost in translation or simply missed from the point of collection to analysis, and our latest release makes this even easier to achieve. You can now directly import interview transcripts into Qualitative Insights (previously known as Reframer), allowing you and your team to capture and tag observations effortlessly while maintaining the integrity of the information. Get ready to experience a new level of efficiency in your qualitative research!

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The importance of transcription ✍🏽

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Whether you are conducting interviews alone or with the support of your team, it’s important to prioritize building connections with participants rather than struggling to take notes and ask the right questions. Transcripts ensure you avoid losing crucial insights and context as you move from data collection to analysis and reduce the likelihood of human errors and missed observations that sometimes occur during live note-taking sessions. 

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It also enables smooth collaboration among team members by allowing them to review interviews and contribute to the analysis, even if they weren't present.

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How to import a transcript to Qualitative Insights

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Watch the video 📽️ 👀

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You can add a transcript to a new or existing study in Qualitative Insights with just a few clicks. After recording an interview or user testing session, open your Qualitative Insights study and click ‘Sessions’ then ‘+ Transcript.’

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Add a session title, any session information or a link to the video for future reference in the session information box. If you have created segments, choose which ones apply to this participant; you can update these later at any time. Then click ‘import transcript.’

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Click ‘Select transcript’ and ensure you made any edits before importing it. This feature supports .vtt, .srt, or .txt files. Now, click Capture observations’ to complete the import and create and tag your observations.

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You will see your transcript displayed. If you use a .vtt or .srt file, you will see the speaker names have been identified. You can update the speaker names by clicking on configure speakers.

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How to create observations

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To create observations from your transcript, simply highlight text, enter a new tag or select an existing one, then click create an observation.

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There is no limit to how many transcripts you can import. This means you can import all your past and future interviews, ensuring all your research data is in one place for easy access and analysis.

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Take the Qualitative Insights Academy Course 📚

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Qualitative Insights supports your entire qualitative research workflow, from conducting interviews and capturing observations to tagging and visualizing your data.   It keeps all your valuable user interviews and usability testing metadata in one place.

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To learn more about how to get the most out of Qualitative Insights, take the Qualitative Insights course at the Optimal Academy. In this short course, you'll learn how to set yourself and your team up to capture, tag, and group your observations to get to the insights faster.

If you're more of a visual person, you can watch a 20 minute talk which explains how to use the narrative arc in your in-person research.

The power of stories

Stories are powerful things. You don’t need me to tell you that! You’ve probably read a book, seen a play, a film or a TV series and thought: “Man*, that was brilliant! The way they drew all those threads together in that last scene. I was totally with them!”

We’ve been telling each other stories for millennia - they were the way we explained the world around us as well as the way in which we entertained ourselves.

From an early age, the logic of stories is hard-wired into our minds through repetition. This is why, two thirds of the way through a story you have a fair idea of where things are headed and can take a good guess at what is going to happen in the end.

*Except you didn't say 'Man', as you aren't as old as me.

The narrative arc

In 1863 Freytag developed this pyramid which he used to explain what was happening in stories:

• EXPOSITION: The characters, the context are introduced
• INCITING INCIDENT: Something happens to begin the action
• RISING ACTION: The story builds
• STORY CLIMAX: The point of greatest tension
• FALLING ACTION: Events that happen as a result of the climax
• RESOLUTION: The problem is wrapped up and solved
• DENOUEMENT: The end, what happens to our characters

Many, many stories follow this arc; they may miss off the exposition or skip the resolution but they will have that story climax where all the threads come together.

The narrative arc in in-person research

So, the narrative arc is interesting, but how does it relate to in-person research? How does knowing the plot of Little Red Riding Hood help you become a better researcher?

The problem with in-person research

In-person research can be very nerve-wracking for you and for your participants.

I’ve seen people conducting interviews who know what they want to find out get lost in futile questions having taken the wrong turn, or ‘spoiling’ an interview by revealing too much about the subject or mentioning it too soon.

Participants can also find interviews nerve-wracking. They might struggle to understand the context of questioning and may feel they have ‘done a bad job’ as they haven’t given useful answers. As apparently random questions come at them, they can feel off balance and concerned. The whole experience can start to feel like a police interview*. There’s no thread for them to follow.

*Real police interviews are not like they are shown on TV. Real police interviews are thorough, repetitive, detailed and rational. No shouting or table-tipping.

Let’s look at the steps in the narrative arc and how they apply to an in-person research situation.

Exposition

Start the story by introducing the characters - yourself and who else is in attendance but also give the participant the chance to say something about themselves.

Give a little backstory or context about the research - not so much that you ‘give away the plot.’ Explain ‘why we’re here’, let the participant answer some really simple questions so that they can get some 'runs on the board' and get over any nerves.

Inciting incident

Ask the first question that gets things moving. Usually something that lets the participant give their context. For example, “Tell me about the last time you…”

Rising action

Here’s where you can ask questions that build on each other and let the participant really expand on their story. Your job is to guide them towards the story climax which is where you hit them with your most important question.

The trick in the rising action is to reduce the bias as much as you can by carefully ordering and phrasing the questions so that you don’t give away too much and so the participant can respond without feeling driven to an answer.

Climax

You've got your participant to the point where they have all of the context to answer your most important question or questions, so go ahead and ask them.

Strictly speaking in stories, you tend only to have one story climax. In your research you may have several, but not so many that the participant feels like a quote machine. The story climax is going to line up with the research objectives you set before you wrote your discussion guide. If it doesn’t, your research is not going to give you the insights you were looking for.

Falling action

Now that the cat's out of the bag, your participant will understand why you asked some of the questions in the rising action. Go ahead and give them the chance to reflect. You can also tie up those loose ends, things you skated over as they might color the key response: “So earlier, when I asked you about X you said Y. Tell me about that.”

Resolution

Every session ends with a final word from the participant. People like to ask the ‘what if you had a magic wand’ question, but I find it better to ask about people’s feelings towards something. Whether that’s an existing issue or a future opportunity.

Denouement

It’s a fancy French term for 'ending' and all sessions must have one. This is where you thank the participant for their time, give them their incentive, encourage them to reach out if they have further thoughts. For some participants, it's important as they may have all the time in the world and need to be given the right signals that ‘we’re done, thanks’!

Summary

Use the narrative arc to help you order your thoughts when you're writing your discussion guide and when running your sessions.

If your in-person session shows clear drive in a direction - has subtle guiding story cues - even if the participant doesn’t know exactly where you are heading, they will be able to contribute meaningfully. The arc of the story that you are both telling will provide enough context for them to answer each question you ask - at the point you ask it.

Furthermore, your participant will leave your session feeling good about the experience and your organization. It’s a win-win!

The only tool you need to power your entire qualitative research workflow is here. We’re excited to announce the new and improved Reframer is now live for all customers!

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What is qualitative research?

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It’s an integral part of any research journey. Think: customer or stakeholder interviews, prototype testing, A/B testing, moderated interviews, and open-ended questions. In a nutshell, it’s anything that isn’t a closed question.

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It’s also the most popular research method – 85% of people who do research conduct interviews and usability tests as part of their projects or workflows.

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How can Reframer help me with my qualitative research?

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It’s no secret that anyone conducting research is time-poor. Qualitative research is especially time-consuming and messy, as it’s almost always conducted across multiple tools or mediums. 

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Reframer gives you your time back, and enables you to manage your entire qualitative research workflow within one single tool. 

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From setting up and conducting interviews, through to analyzing your data – you can uncover those juicy insights in days, not weeks (or months) without ever having to leave the Optimal Workshop app.

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Powerful, in depth tagging and analysis tools

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Analyzing and making sense of your interview or usability testing data with Reframer is easy and flexible (not to mention very aesthetically pleasing!)  

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Visualize and group observations with the affinity map

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Affinity mapping is a flexible and visual way to quickly group, organize and make sense of qualitative data (i.e. post-its and whiteboards). 

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With Reframer, affinity mapping is more powerful than ever. Your observations, tags and themes are all connected and stored in one place. It’s easy to search and filter your data, group like observations by proximity, then review and sort them in table format. 

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Discover patterns with the theme builder

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The Themes tab offers tag-based analysis with powerful filters. It enables you to explore the relationships between your observations and then create themes based on these relationships. This gives you more quantifiable results to support the qualitative, observation-based analysis that you’ve done in the affinity map. 

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Explore connections between tags with the chord diagram

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The chord diagram is a beautifully visual way to easily explore the relationships between your tagged observations and spot key themes. 

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If you’ve got a lot of tags, it may look a little overwhelming to start with. But don’t let that fool you – it’s easy to get the hang of, and once you do, you’ll wonder how you ever analyzed data without it!

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Real-time collaboration with your team

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We recommend that you conduct qualitative research as a team, whenever you can. Reframer makes this easy – it was built with collaboration in mind. 

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Invite study members

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On an Optimal Workshop team plan, you can work together from start to finish. Team members can take notes and create or use tags during interview sessions. In the affinity map, you can work collaboratively to group and edit observations in real-time. 

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Invite guest notetakers

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If you just need an extra helping hand with taking notes during your interviews or usability tests, you can invite guest notetakers to your sessions. Guest notetakers can take notes in the sessions you invite them to, but can’t see notes taken by others or analyze data.

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The guest notetakers feature is a great way to involve your wider team or stakeholders in your user research activities.

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Share your findings

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Need the raw data from your interviews? Want to share your affinity map visuals with other team members? Both are easily downloadable with the click of a button!

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An intuitive, end-to-end workflow

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When it comes to conducting qualitative research, Reframer is faster, easier and tidier than using other digital (or manual) tools. It houses all your data and insights in one place and supports the collaborative nature of qualitative research. 

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It’s not just for seasoned researchers either. We’ve put special focus on ensuring that the analysis is easy to learn for anyone doing qualitative research, regardless of skill level. And our in-app guidance will have you up to speed in no time.

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So what are you waiting for? Login now and get started on your Reframer journey!

Want to do great user research? Maybe you already have tonnes of quantitative research done through testing, surveys and checking. Data galore! Now you really want to get under the skin of your users, understand the why behind their decisions. Getting human-centric with products can mean creating better performing, stronger and more intuitive products that provide an awesome user experience (UX). An in-depth understanding of your users and how they tick can mean the difference between designing products that just work and products that intuitively speak your users language, make them happy, engaged and keep them coming back.

This is where qualitative research comes into play. Understanding how your users tick becomes clearer through user interviews. Interviewing users will provide human insights that make all the difference, the nuance that pulls your product or interface out of the fray and into the light. 

How do you interview confidently? Whether this is your first foray into the world of user interviewing or wanting to step up your game, there are a few common pitfalls along the way. We cover off 7 of the most common mistakes, and how to avoid them, helping you avoid these on your way to interview greatness! 

How do you conduct a user research interview?

There are several ways of doing qualitative user research.  Here we will talk about in-person user interviews. Great user interviewing is a skill in itself. And relies on great prep, quality participants and excellent analysis of the results. But don’t be put off, all of this can be learned, and with the right environment and tools can be simple to implement.  Want to find out more in detail about how to conduct an interview? Take a look here.

Even if you’re an old hand we’re not all gifted interviewing experts, it’s okay if you lack expertise. In fact, totally nailing interview technique is almost impossible thanks to a ton of different factors. It's your job to keep what you can under control, and record the interview well in the moment for later analysis. Keeping safe all those lovely human centric insights you unearth. 

Here are seven practical user research interview mistakes you could be making, and how to fix them:

1. Not having enough participants

It can be intimidating doing any sort of user research. Particularly when you need to find participants. And a random selection, not just those down the hall in the next office (though sometimes they can be great). And getting a large enough pool of participants that make the data meaningful, and the insights impactful.

Not to worry, there are ways to find a giant pool of reliable interview participants. Either dive into existing users that you are familiar with, and they with you. Or get in touch with us to recruit a small or large sample of participants. 

2. Not knowing enough about your interview participants

Interviews are two-way streets, so if you’re hoping to encourage anyone to be open and honest in an interview setting you’ll need to do your homework on the person you’re interviewing. This may not always be applicable if you’re looking for a truly random sample of people. Understanding a little more about your participants should help the conversation flow, and when you do go off-script, it is natural and curiosity driven.

3. Not creating an open interview environment

Everything about your user interview environment affects the outcome of the interview. Your participants need to feel confident and comfortable. The space needs to remove as many distractions as possible. A comfortable workstation, laptop that works, and even the air conditioning at a good temperature can all play a part in providing a relaxed environment. So when it comes to the interview they are able to demonstrate and explain their behaviour or decisions on their own terms.

Of course, in this modern day, the availability of remote and virtual interviewing has changed the game slightly. Allowing your participants to be in their own environment can be beneficial. Be careful to take note of what you can see about their space. Is it crowded, dim, busy or noisy? If you don’t have full control over the environment be sure to note this in a factual way.

4. Not having a note-taker in the room

Good note-taking is a skill in its own right and it’s important to have someone skilled at it. Bringing a dedicated note-taker into the user interviews also frees you up to focus on your participant and your interviewing. Allowing the conversation to flow. Leaving the note-taker to focus on marking down all of the relevant points of interest. 

5. Using a bad recording setup

Deciding to audio (and/or video) record the interview is a great option. When choosing this option, recording can be  possibly the most important aspect of the interview setup process. Being able to focus on the interview without worrying about your recording equipment is key. Make sure that your recording equipment is high quality and in a central position to pick up everything you discuss - don’t trip at the first hurdle and be left with unusable data. 

A dedicated note-taker can still be of value in the room, they can monitor the recording and note any environmental or contextual elements of the interview process. Taking the stress off of you for the recording set up, and any adjustments.

Another option is Reframer. It’s a great recording tool that can free you up to focus on your participant and the interview. Reframer will audio record your interview,auto time-stamp and provide a standardized format for recording all of your interviews. Post analysis becomes simple and quick. And even quicker to share the data and insights.

6. Not taking the time to prepare your interview questions

Lack of preparation can be a fatal error for any user research and user interviews are no different. Interviews are a qualitative research method, and your questions don’t need to be as strict as those in a quantitative questionnaire, for example. However, you will still need a standardised script to regulate your user interviews and make sure all of your participants are asked the same set of questions. Always leaving plenty of room to go off script to get under the skin of why your participant interacts with your product in a particular way!

7. Not having a plan of action for organizing your data

Qualitative data is unstructured, which can make it hard to organize and analyze. Recording and including all of your interviews on one platform so you can analyze the insights and conclusions together makes it easier to review.  Reframer can do all of this in one place allowing all of your organizational stakeholders access to the data. 

Don’t miss anything in your interviews, you put in the time, the effort and the investment into doing them. Make sure that they are recorded, available and analyzed in one place. For the team to see, use and report against.

Wrap Up

User interviews can be intimidating, to organise, to prep for and even finding your participants can be hard. But user interviews needn’t be too much of a headache. With the Optimal Workshop platform, we take the pain out of the process with participant selection, recording, analyzing and reporting.

If you want a single platform to record, analyze and store your data, take a look at Optimal Workshop and Reframer. And get interviewing!

Lately, I’ve found myself sitting in the participant’s chair at the UX research table more and more and it’s been an eye-opening collection of experiences. As UX researchers, we’re definitely not our users, but we are someone else’s. We use products, services and tools too! I’ve recently discovered that participating in user research not only helps out a fellow UXer with their qualitative research, but has also helped me grow my skills.

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Here are 3 reasons why you should try being a participant for yourself.

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1. Build empathy for the participant experience 🫶

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Having facilitated hundreds of UX research sessions over the years, I didn’t think I would be as nervous as I was going in as a participant! When we design our research sessions we don’t often give our participants a heads up on what we’re going to talk about because we don’t want to influence them for one, but truly not knowing what to expect made me feel slightly jittery. Before and at the beginning of these experiences, I felt quite unprepared. I wasn’t expecting to feel that way.

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During these sessions I often found myself wondering things like: Were my answers detailed enough? Will my responses be kept confidential? (I could never seem to remember if that had been covered in the introduction!). I worried that I wasn’t giving helpful responses or if I was talking too much. When misunderstandings arose in the conversation, I felt responsible and I was kicking myself for not communicating clearly enough!

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As a participant, I completely lost track of time during the session and developed an entirely new appreciation for timekeeping as a facilitator! I could have talked well beyond the scope of the interview timeframe and needed to be kept on track.

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I also very quickly discovered that thinking aloud is a lot harder to do than it sounds. It’s not a simple matter of verbalizing your thoughts as they happen. You have to think them, process them, decide how to verbalize them and then talk – all while someone (often a complete stranger) is looking at you expectantly and eagerly. It’s awkward and it feels weird. And look, it is widely acknowledged that it’s challenging and unnatural, but I didn’t fully appreciate or understand that until I was required to do it myself in a research environment.

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Did I experience some of these thoughts and feelings because I’m a UX researcher and I know what the other side looks and feels like? Maybe. It’s certainly possible and I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out this potential bias, but I do feel that having done this I now have a greater capacity to empathize with the participant experience. I’ve now been on the receiving end of the introductory spiel (and tuned out during it!), I’ve now got first-hand experience with the on-the-spot answering of those questions we carefully craft and I’ve scrambled for words when I’ve been asked to explain why I said what I said.

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These experiences have taught me that there’s a good chance the participant is just as nervous as I am and that a little reassurance or confirmation of usefulness goes a very long way. I’ve learned that regardless of the skill or experience of the researcher, interview questions can be super confusing and hard to answer. Having questions rephrased and being told that what I shared was helpful made me feel significantly more comfortable and able to think clearly and open up more - therefore providing more value to the researcher.

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I’ve also been itching to find out what happened next after the sessions ended. Was I helpful and in what way? Where did the insight I provided lead? I’ve learned that while we walk away with more questions, so might our participants and what can we do about that? We’re so busy, but stopping for a moment further down the track if/where possible to reach out and say ‘Hey, I just thought you might like to see what we did with all that great information you shared with us’ might be nice. It’s not always practical or possible and sometimes we have to wait until the thing goes live, but it’s food for thought.

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2. Learn from other researcher’s styles 📚

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Every UX researcher is different and we all have our own approaches and styles. As a notetaker for other researchers, I’ve always enjoyed having the opportunity to observe them in action, but somehow experiencing it as a participant felt different in the best possible way. It felt more immersive. Perhaps it was because I didn’t have to think about anything else or observe the participant’s reactions and was able to absorb every second of that experience as it was happening to me rather than in front of me.

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I participated in a usability testing session with two researchers - one facilitating and one taking notes - and the notetaker was so unobtrusive and quiet that I completely forgot they were there! They said a quick hello at the beginning of the session and then sat back behind me and blended in with the furniture and didn’t make a sound until they piped up with a question at the very end. Note taking is such a grossly underrated UX research skill. There’s a lot to think about, a lot to avoid thinking about (e.g., jumping into solution right there in the session) and of course we have to be mindful of the potential impact of our behavior on the participant, but this went beyond stifling disappointment or resisting the urge to speak. This was a dignified and seamlessly elegant note taker existence unlike anything I have ever seen.

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In other sessions as a user interview participant I was delighted when researchers injected multiple moments of humor into those previously mentioned introductory spiel snooze fests. It did more than just make me feel comfortable - humor helped me focus better on what was being said and remember important details during and well after the session had ended.

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I also learned a thing or two about comfortable silences when I participated in a contextual session with two researchers. One researcher kept prodding and repeatedly asking questions while the other exuded a quiet and calm demeanor and simply patiently waited for me to complete my task and talk about it in my own time (and way). It won’t work in all situations or with all participants, but it made me feel relaxed and comfortable enough to talk through what I was thinking and seeing. This approach also made thinking aloud easier for me.

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It’s important to remember that it doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced UX researcher or if you’re just starting out, everyone can learn something new from another researcher and stepping up into a session as an actual participant is a great way to do that.

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3. Give back and grow our industry 🌱

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One of my favourite things about the UX industry has always been its sense of community. We’re a group of people who care. We care about our users, we care about each other and we care about our capability as an industry and where we’re headed. Agreeing to be a participant in another researcher’s study is a great way to give back.

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As I mentioned earlier, we use products and services too and in addition to this, there’s a whole heap of them out there designed just for us! It makes sense that in the same way that we as researchers ask our own customers and users to help us design better products, we should be open to doing the same for the people who design for us.

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The cool thing about being a participant who is also a researcher is that we pick up issues other people might not. We might be a little tougher and less likely to let a usability issue slide. We might be the person that provides the external and fresh-eyed validation a researcher needs to convince a stakeholder that a design needs to be changed or worked on some more. A researcher in the participant’s chair is a powerful hybrid - it’s a participant and expert reviewer in one.

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As a general rule of thumb, if you’re invited to participate in another researcher’s study, I do think it’s best to always be upfront with them about who you are and what you do so that they can determine if you are potentially too biased to be included. It’s their study and informed consent matters. Think about what you would want as a researcher. And if they’re specifically asking you to participate because you’re a researcher - that’s awesome!

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So those are just some of the reasons why you should take a spin in the participant’s chair. Professional development is a lifelong learning process for us all. I’m looking forward to implementing what I’ve learned from these experiences and continuing to plonk myself in that participant chair to keep growing my perspective and helping out other researchers along the way.

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Happy researching (and participating)!

Having a library of user research books is invaluable. Whether you’re an old hand in the field of UX research or just dipping your toes in the water, being able to reference detailed information on methods, techniques and tools will make your life much easier.

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There’s really no shortage of user research/UX reading lists online, so we wanted to do something a little different. We’ve broken our list up into sections to make finding the right book for a particular topic as easy as possible.

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General user research guides

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These books cover everything you need to know about a number of UX/user research topics. They’re great to have on your desk to refer back to – we certainly have them on the bookshelf here at Optimal Workshop.

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Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research

Mike Kuniavsky

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This book covers 13 UX research techniques in a reference format. There’s a lot of detail, making it a useful resource for people new to the field and those who just need more clarification around a certain topic. There’s also a lot of practical information that you’ll find applicable in the real world. For example, information about how to work around research budgets and tight time constraints.

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• Goodreads link

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Just Enough Research

Erika Hall

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In Just Enough Research, author Erika Hall explains that user research is something everyone can and should do. She covers several research methods, as well as things like how to identify your biases and make use of your findings. Designers are also likely to find this one quite useful, as she clearly covers the relationship between research and design.

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• Goodreads link

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Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction

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Harry Hochheiser, Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Heidi Feng

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Like Observing the User Experience, this is a dense guide – but it’s another essential one. Here, experts on human-computer interaction and usability explain different qualitative and quantitative research methods in an easily understandable format. There are also plenty of real examples to help frame your thinking around the usefulness of different research methods.

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• Goodreads link

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Information architecture

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If you’re new to information architecture (IA), understanding why it’s such an important concept is a great place to start. There’s plenty of information online, but there are also several well-regarded books that make great starting points.

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Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites

Peter Morville, Louis Rosenfeld

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You’ll probably hear this book referred to as “the polar bear book”, just because the cover features a polar bear. But beyond featuring a nice illustration of a bear, this book clearly covers the process of creating large websites that are both easy to navigate and appealing to use. It’s a useful book for designers, information architects and user researchers.

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• Goodreads link

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How to Make Sense of Any Mess

Abby Covert

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This is a great introduction to information architecture and serves as a nice counter to the polar bear book, being much shorter and more easily digestible. Author Abby Covert explains complex concepts in a way anyone can understand and also includes a set of lessons and exercises with each chapter.

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• Goodreads link

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User interviews

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For those new to the task, the prospect of interviewing users is always daunting. That makes having a useful guide that much more of a necessity!

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Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

Steve Portigal

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While interviewing users may seem like something that doesn’t require a guide, an understanding of different interview techniques can go a long way. This book is essentially a practical guide to the art of interviewing users. Author Steve Portigal covers how to build rapport with your participants and the art of immersing yourself in how other people see the world – both key skills for interviewers!

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• Goodreads link

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Usability testing

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Web usability is basically the ease of use of a website. It’s a broad topic, but there are a number of useful books that explain why it’s important and outline some of the key principles.

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Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Steve Krug

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Don’t Make Me Think is the first introduction to the world of UX and usability for many people, and for good reason – it’s a concise introduction to the topics and is easy to digest. Steve Krug explains some of the key principles of intuitive navigation and information architecture clearly and without overly technical language. In the latest edition, he’s updated the book to include mobile usability considerations.

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As a testament to just how popular this book is, it was released in 2000 and has since had 2 editions and sold 400,000 copies.

• Goodreads link

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Design

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The design–research relationship is an important one, even if it’s often misunderstood. Thankfully, authors like Don Norman and Vijay Kumar are here to explain everything.

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The Design of Everyday Things

Don Norman

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This book, by cognitive scientist and usability engineer Don Norman, explains how design is the communication between an object and its user, and how to improve this communication as a way of improving the user experience. If nothing else, this book will force you to take another look at the design of everyday objects and assess whether or not they’re truly user-friendly.

• Goodreads link

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101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization

Vijay Kumar

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A guidebook for innovation in the context of product development, this book approaches the subject in a slightly different way to many other books on the same subject. The focus here is that the practice of creating new products is actually a science – not an art. Vijay Kumar outlines practical methods and useful tools that researchers and designers can use to drive innovation, making this book useful for anyone involved in product development.

• Goodreads link

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See our list on Goodreads

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We've put together a list of all of the above books on Goodreads, which you can access here.

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Further reading

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For experienced practitioners and newcomers alike, user research can often seem like a minefield to navigate. It can be tricky to figure out which method to use when, whether you bring a stakeholder into your usability test (you should) and how much you should pay participants. Take a look at some of the other articles on our blog if you’d like to learn more.

Like all qualitative research methods in UX, user interviews conducted over the phone have their pros, cons and challenges. Sometimes they are your best or only option. We’ve all been in situations where we’ve had to do the best we can with what we have because it sure beats doing nothing at all. It might be that your participants are remotely located and maybe you don’t all have access to the same technology — access to technology is a privilege! Or maybe you do and that technology just isn’t playing the game and you have to improvise. Maybe you work in a secure environment that puts all kinds of limitations on your research or maybe it’s something else entirely.

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One of the biggest challenges of running a user interview over the phone is that unless you’re doing it via video call, the communication is entirely verbal. There’s no body language for you to communicate or observe, you can’t talk with your hands or draw something out on a page and you can’t control the environment in which your participant dials in from. That said, it absolutely can be done and it is possible to gather useful and usable insights for your project by running a user interview over the phone. Here are 8 tips to help make it happen.

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It’s very important that you dial into a phone-based user interview from a location that is free from distractions and excessive background noise. You don’t want to have to keep asking your participant to speak up or repeat themselves because you can’t hear them and they shouldn’t have to listen to your colleagues sharing Game of Thrones spoilers in the background. In my experience, quiet spaces aren’t always available at short notice and it pays to plan ahead. If you can, book a meeting room in advance, arrive early and make sure you book extra time either side of your interview time slot so that any meetings booked before yours will have ample time to clear out.

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It can also help to headphones and try to find a meeting room that is quiet and not right next to another one with glass walls because, as I’ve learned the hard way, sound carries and it can be just as disruptive as dialing in from an open plan office environment! If a quiet space isn’t available in your workspace, consider making the call from home if you can or from some other quiet space outside of the office. This might seem obvious, but I see mistakes around call location happen all the time. Participant experience matters and the environment you dial in from can have a big impact on that.

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Just like you need to plan your call location ahead of time, it’s also best if your participant does too and you’re the best person to help them do that. I once had a participant dial in from a moving car with all the windows rolled down and another from a busy call center environment — both scenarios could have been avoided. A great way to help your participants plan ahead is to politely ask them dial in from somewhere quiet when you first book the session. You might include this information in the calendar invite along with all the other helpful details you’ll be providing e.g., contact details, session details and instructions for any technology you might be using to run the call. Keep it light and friendly and maybe list it as the ‘where’ for the meeting e.g., Where: Please dial in from a quiet location so we can chat.

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Sometimes despite your best efforts, a participant may still join the session from a less than desirable location. They might not be aware of how loud the background noise in their office is or they may have forgotten to go somewhere quiet. Maybe they’ve unexpectedly needed to work from home and their dog won’t stop barking. When this happens, it is best to try to see if they’re able to move to a better location away from the noise and distractions. Toughing it out rarely works and can derail the entire session wasting both your time and the participant’s. Be patient and empathetic with them and consider exploring whether it’s possible to reschedule if it can’t be resolved then and there.

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Participant responses will be entirely verbal and you’ll want to factor in extra time to ask clarifying and further probing questions. If you plan to go in with a pre-prepared list of questions, keep it brief. It’s totally fine to have a larger overall list of questions you’d like to ask — especially for cases when participants are super articulate and rip through them quickly — but limit the number of ‘must-ask’ questions as much as you can, otherwise you might not get through them all.

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And on that note, tip #3 does not mean you should hold an extra long session to compensate — nobody wants to sit on the phone for an hour! It can be exhausting and you don’t know if your participant is having to hold the phone up to their ear the entire time — ouch! Keep the session length to under 30 minutes in total. If you feel that’s not enough time to get the answers you need, consider diversifying your approach by running your research in multiple parts.

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You might follow up with a short survey after your session or you might include a few additional questions in your screener before the interview to gather more context from your participants. Keep these brief, don’t ask anything you don’t actually need to know and be mindful of taking up too much of your participants’ time — they are giving you a gift, so don’t overdo it.

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Some people are quite comfortable talking to complete strangers over the phone and some people aren’t. You’re going to come across all types of people and you may even feel a little nervous before each session — we’ve all been there! I think it’s important to recognize upfront that awkward interruptions and silences in the conversation are going to happen and to embrace it with confidence and humor. It’s not a big deal and your participant will likely be just as nervous as you are. Tackle it together. Keep the conversation light and humorous — make a joke, and if you interrupt the participant, apologize and keep going. Smiling when you talk can also help make you both feel more comfortable — you’ll feel better and they’ll hear the warmth in your voice that will put them at ease too.

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With all those juicy insights being delivered entirely verbally down the phone, it’s a good idea to record the conversation if you can. You might miss something and recording the session will allow you to go back to it. I’d also recommend avoiding taking detailed notes during the call. Just immerse yourself in the conversation and type your notes up later from the recording.

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Everyone has their own unique approach and style to running research. I’m someone who finds it hard to focus when talking on the phone and I’ve noticed that it’s much easier if I don’t have to do anything else! Do what works for you, but definitely consider recording those sessions where possible to help ensure research traceability and make life easier when sharing with your team. Just note that you’ll need to ask your participants if it’s OK that you record the call.

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A silver lining to the challenges of running user interviews over the phone is that your participant can’t see you. You don’t have to worry about how you’re dressed or how you’re sitting or keeping your facial expressions in check. You can have your planning notes and questions lists spread out in front of you or up on your screen without having to worry about them being distracting or potentially leading. You can put yourself on mute if you have to and you get to dial in from a really comfortable place. Make the most of it! Run the session from an environment where you feel relaxed and confident. No matter how many times I’ve done this, I always feel a twinge of the jitters right before I make the call and being in a comfortable and safe space can make all the difference.

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Sending a quick thank you note after a user interview conducted over the phone is a nice way to add a human touch to close out the participant experience. It’s also a good time to deliver or confirm details around how any incentives will be granted to the participant for their time.

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So there are 8 tips to help you ace interviewing users over the phone! What are your top tips?

Few UX research techniques can surpass the user interview for the simple fact that you can gain a number of in-depth insights by speaking to just a handful of people. Yes, the prospect of sitting down in front of your customers can be a daunting one, but you’ll gain a level of insight and detail that really is tough to beat.

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This research method is popular for a reason – it’s extremely flexible and can deliver deep, meaningful results in a relatively short amount of time.

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We’ve put together this article for both user interview newbies and old hands alike. Our intention is to give you a guide that you can refer back to so you can make sure you're getting the most out of this technique. Of course, feel free to leave a comment if you think there’s something else we should add.

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What is a user interview?

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User interviews are a technique you can use to capture qualitative information from your customers and other people you’re interested in learning from. For example, you may want to interview a group of retirees before developing a new product aimed at their market.

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User interviews usually follow the format of a guided conversation, diving deep into a particular topic. While sometimes you may have some predefined questions or topics to cover, the focus of your interviews can change depending on what you learn along the way.

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Given the format, user interviews can help you answer any number of questions, such as:

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• How do people currently shop online? Are there any products they would never consider purchasing this way?
• How do people feel about using meal delivery services? What stops them from trying them out?
• How do ride sharing drivers figure out which app to use when they’re about to start a shift?

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It’s important to remember that user interviews are all about people's perception of something, not usability. What this means in practical terms is that you shouldn’t go into a user interview expecting to find out how they navigate through a particular app, product or website. Those are answers you can gain through usability testing.

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When should you interview your users?

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Now that we have an understanding of what user interviews are and the types of questions this method can help you answer, when should you do them? As this method will give you insights into why people think the way they do, what they think is important and any suggestions they have, they’re mostly useful in the discovery stages of the design process when you're trying to understand the problem space.

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You may want to run a series of user interviews at the start of a project in order to inform the design process. Interviews with users can help you to create detailed personas, generate feature ideas based on real user needs and set priorities. Looked at another way, doesn’t it seem like an unnecessary risk not to talk to your users before building something for them?

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Plan your research

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Before sitting down and writing your user interview, you need to figure out your research question. This is the primary reason for running your user interviews – your ‘north star’. It’s also a good idea to engage with your stakeholders when trying to figure this question out as they’ll be able to give you useful insights and feedback.

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A strong research question will help you to create interview questions that are aligned and give you a clear goal. The key thing is to make sure that it’s a strong, concise goal that relates to specific user behaviors. You don’t want to start planning for your interview with a research question like “How do customers use our mobile app”. It’s far too broad to direct your interview planning.

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Write your questions

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Now it’s time to write your user interview questions. If you’ve taken the time to engage with stakeholders and you’ve created a solid research question, this step should be relatively straightforward.

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Here are a few things to focus on when writing your interview questions:

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• Encourage your interviewees to tell stories: There’s a direct correlation between the questions you write for a user interview and the answers you get back. Consider more open-ended questions, with the aim of getting your interviewees to tell you stories and share more detail. For example, “Tell me about the last car you owned” is much better than “What was the last car you owned”.
• Consider different types of questions: You don’t want to dive right into the complex, detailed questions when your interviewee has barely walked into the room. It’s much better to start an interview off with several ‘warm-up’ questions, that will get them in the right frame of mind. Think questions like: “What do you do for work?” and “How often do you use a computer at home?”. Answering these questions will put them in the right frame of mind for the rest of the interview.
• Start with as many questions as you can think of – then trim: This can be quite a helpful exercise. When you’re actually putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and writing your questions, go broad at first. Then, once you’ve got a large selection to choose from, trim them back.
• Have someone review your questions: Whether it’s another researcher on your team or perhaps someone who’s familiar with the audience you plan to interview, get another pair of eyes on your questions. Beyond just making sure they all make sense and are appropriate, they may be able to point out any questions you may have missed.

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Recruit participants

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Having a great set of questions is all well and good, but you need to interview the right kind of people. It’s not always easy. Finding representative or real users can quickly suck up a lot of time and bog down your other work. But this doesn’t have to be the case. With some strategy and planning you can make the process of participant recruitment quick and easy.

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There are 2 main ways to go about recruitment. You can either handle the process yourself – we’ll share some tips for how to do this below – or use a recruitment service. Using a dedicated recruitment service will save you the hassle of actively searching for participants, which can often become a significant time-sink.

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If you’re planning to recruit people yourself, here are a few ways to go about the process. You may find that using multiple methods is the best way to net the pool of participants you need.

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• Reach out to your customer support team: There’s a ready source of real users available in every organization: the customer support team. These are the people that speak to your organization’s customers every day, and have a direct line to their problems and pain points. Working with this team is a great way to access suitable participants, plus customers will value the fact that you’re taking the time to speak to them.
• Recruit directly from your website: Support messaging apps like Intercom and intercept recruiting tools like Ethnio allow you to recruit participants directly from your website by serving up live intercepts. This is a fast, relatively hands-off way to recruit people quickly.
• Ask your social media followers: LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook can be great sources of research participants. There’s also the bonus that you can broadcast the fact that your organization focuses on research – and that’s always good publicity! If you don’t have a large following, you can also run paid ads on different social platforms.

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Once a pool of participants start to flow in, consider setting up a dedicated research panel where you can log their details and willingness to take part in future research. It may take some admin at the start, but you’ll save time in the long run.

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Note: Figure out a plan for participant data protection before you start collecting and storing their information. As the researcher, it’s up to you to take proper measures for privacy and confidentiality, from the moment you collect an email address until you delete it. Only store information in secure locations, and make sure you get consent before you ever turn on a microphone recorder or video camera.

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Run your interviews

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Now for the fun part – running your user interviews. In most cases, user interviews follow a simple format. You sit down next to your participant and run through your list of questions, veering into new territory if you sense an interesting discussion. At the end, you thank them for their time and pass along a small gift (such as a voucher) as a thank-you.

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Of course, there are a few other things that you’ll want to keep in mind if you really want to conduct the best possible interviews.

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• Involve others: User interviews are a great way to show the value of research and give people within your organization a direct insight into how users think. There are no hard and fast rules around who you should bring to a user interview, just consider how useful the experience is likely to be for them. If you like, you can also assign them the role of notetaker.
• Record the interview: You’ll have to get consent from the interviewee, but having a recording of the interview will make the process of analysis that much easier. In addition to being able to listen to the recording again, you can convert the entire session into a searchable text file.
• Don’t be afraid to go off-script: Interviewing is a skill, meaning that the more interviews you conduct, the better you’re going to get. Over time, you’ll find that you’re able to naturally guide the conversation in different directions as you pick up on things the interviewee says. Don’t be discouraged if you find yourself sticking to your prepared questions during your first few interviews.
• Be attentive: You don’t want to come across as a brick wall when interviewing someone – you want to be seen as an attentive listener. This means confirming that you’re listening by nodding, making eye contact and asking follow-up questions naturally (this last one may take practice). If you really struggle to ask follow-up questions, try writing a few generic questions can you can use at different points throughout the interview, for example “Could you tell me more about that?”. There’s a great guide on UXmatters about the role empathy has to play in understanding users.
• Debrief afterwards: Whether it’s just you or you and a notetaker, take some time after the interview to go over how it went. This is a good opportunity to take down any details either you may have missed and to reflect and discuss some of the key takeaways.

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Analyze your interview findings

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At first glance, analyzing the qualitative data you’ve captured from a user interview can seem daunting. But, with the right approach (and some useful tools) you can extract each and every useful insight.

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If you’ve recorded your interview sessions, you’ll need to convert your audio recordings into text files. We recommend a tool like Descript. This software makes it easy to take an audio file of your recording and transform it into a document, which is much faster than doing it without dedicated software. If you like, there’s also the option of various ‘white glove’ services where someone will transcribe the interview for you.

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With your interview recordings transcribed and notes in-hand, you can start the process of thematic analysis. If you’re unfamiliar, thematic analysis is one of the most popular approaches for qualitative research as it helps you to find different patterns and themes in your data. There are 2 ways to approach this. The first is largely manual, where you set up a spreadsheet with different themes like ‘navigation issue’ and ‘design problem’, and group your findings into these areas. This can be done using sticky notes, which used to be a common ways to analyze findings.

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The second involves dedicated qualitative research tool like Reframer. You log your notes over the course of several interview sessions and then use Reframer’s tagging functionality to assign tags to different insights. By applying tags to your observations, you can then use its analysis features to create wider themes. The real benefit here is that there’s no chance of losing your past interviews and analysis as everything is stored in one place. You can also easily download your findings into a spreadsheet to share them with your team.

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What’s next?

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With your interviews all wrapped up and your analysis underway, you’re likely wondering what’s next. There’s a good chance your interviews will have opened up new areas you’d like to test, so now could be the perfect time to assess other qualitative research methods and add more human data to your research project. On the other hand, you may want to move onto quantitative research and put some numbers behind your research.

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Whether you choose to proceed down a qualitative or quantitative path, we’re pulled together some more useful articles and things for you to read:

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• Qualitative research methods – A breakdown of various qualitative research methods and why you’d want to use this research approach in the first place.
• Taking better notes for better sensemaking – Learn how you can improve your notetaking abilities before your next user interview or usability test.
• 13 time-saving tips and tools for conducting great user interviews – User interviews can be time-sinks, so take a look at these tips to make the process as smooth as possible.
• Pros and cons of conducting user interviews (Interaction Design Foundation) – A really useful resource that breaks down the pros and cons of user interviews.
• Tool: Reframer – You can use Reframer (our qualitative note taking tool) to capture detailed notes during your interviews. Then, you can apply tags and use Reframer’s analysis features to make the most of your interview data.
• Tool: Descript – Transcribing interviews is arduous, and can often take more time than the interview itself. Use a transcription tool like Descript to speed the process up.
• 16 tips for better user interviews – If you’d like another checklist to run through before you start your user interviews, this one is worth checking out.

User interviews are a great research method you can use to gain qualitative data about your users, and understand what they think and feel. But they can be quite time consuming, which can sometimes put people off doing them altogether.They can be a bit of a logistical nightmare to organize. You need to recruit participants, nail down a time and place, bring your gear, and come up with a Plan B if people don’t show up. All of this can take up a fair bit of back and forthing between your research team and other people, and it’s a real headache when you have a deadline to work to.So, how can you reap the great rewards and insights that user interviews provide, while spending less time planning and organizing them? Here are 15 tips and tools to help get you started.

Preparation

1) Come up with a checklist

Checklists can be lifesavers, especially when your brain is running 100 miles an hour and you’re wondering if you’ve forgotten to even introduce yourself to your participant.Whether you’re doing your research remotely or in person, it always helps to have a list of all the tasks you need to do so you can check them off one by one.A great checklist should include:

• the items you need to bring to your sessions (notebooks, laptop, pens, water, and do NOT forget your laptop charger!)
• any links you need to send to your interviewee if speaking to them remotely (Google Hangouts, webex etc.)
• a reminder to get consent to record your interview session
• a reminder to hit the record button

Scripts are also useful for cutting down time. Instead of “umm-ing” and “ahh-ing” your way through your interview, you can have a general idea of what you’ll talk about. Scripts will likely change between each project, but having a loose template that you can chop and change pretty easily will help you save time in the future.Some basic things you’ll want to include in your script:

• an introduction of yourself, and some ice-breaker questions to build a rapport with your participant
• your research goals and objectives — what/who you’re doing this research for and why
• how your research will be used
• the questions you’re going to ask
• tying up loose ends — answering questions from your participant and thanking them very much for their time.

2) Build up a network of participants to choose from

This is another tip that requires a bit of legwork at the start, but saves lots of hassle later on. If you build up a great network of people willing to take part in your research, recruiting can become much easier.Perhaps you can set up a research panel that people can opt into through your website (something we’ve done here at Optimal Workshop that has been a huge help). If you’re working internally and need to interview users at your own company, you can do a similar thing. Reach out to managers or team leaders to get employees on board, get creative with incentives, reward people with thanks or cakes in public — there are loads of ideas.

3) Do your interviews remotely

Remote user research is great. It allows you to talk to all types of people anywhere in the world, without having to spend time and money for travel to get to them.There are many different tools you can use to conduct your user interview remotely.Some easy to use and free ones are Google Hangouts and Skype. As a bonus, it’s likely your participants will already have one of these installed, saving them time and hassle — just don’t forget to record your session.Here are a couple of recording tools you can use:

• QuickTime
• iShowU HD
• Pamela for Skype

4) Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

Make sure you’re not wasting any precious research time and rehearse your interview with a colleague or friend. This will help you figure out anything you’ve missed, or what could potentially go wrong that could cause you time delays and headaches on the day.

• Do your questions make sense, and are they the right kinds of questions?
• Test your responses — are you making sure you stay neutral so you don’t lead your participants along?
• Does your script flow naturally? Or does it sound too scripty?
• Are there any areas that technology could become a hindrance, and how can you make sure you avoid this?

5) Use scheduling tools to book sessions for you

Setting up meetings with colleagues can be difficult, but when you’re reaching out to participants who are volunteering their precious time it can be a nightmare.Make it easier for all involved and use an easy scheduling tool to get rid of most of the hard work.Simply enter in a few times that you’re free to host sessions, and your participants can select which ones work for them.Here are a couple of tools to get you started:

• Calendly
• NeedtoMeet
• Boomerang Calendar
• ScheduleOnce

Don’t forget to automate the reminder emails to save yourself some time. Some of the above tools can sort that out for you!

In-session

6) Avoid talking about yourself — stick to your script!

When you’re trying to build a rapport with your participant, it’s easy to go overboard, get off track and waste precious research time. Avoid talking about yourself too much, and focus on asking about your participant, how they feel, and what they think. Make sure you keep your script handy so you know if you’re heading in the wrong direction.

7) Record interviews, transcribe later

In many user interview scenarios, you’ll have a notetaker to jot down key observations as your session goes on. But if you don’t have the luxury of a notetaker, you’ll likely be relying on yourself to take notes. This can be really distracting when you’re interviewing someone, and will also take up precious research time. Instead, record your interview and only note down timestamps when you come across a key observation.

8) Don’t interrupt

Ever had something to say and started to explain it to someone, only to get interrupted then lose your train of thought? This can happen to your participants if you’re not careful, which can mean delays with getting the information you need. Stay quiet, and give your participant a few seconds before asking what they’re thinking.

9) Don’t get interrupted

If you’re hosting your interview at your office, let your coworkers know so they don’t interrupt you. Hang a sign up on the door of your meeting room and make sure you close the door. If you’re going out of your office, pick a location that’s quiet and secluded like a meeting room at a library, or a quiet corner in a cafe.

10) Take photos of the environment

If you’re interviewing users in their own environment, there are many little details that can help you with your research. But you could spend ages taking note of all these details in your session. You can get a good idea of what your participant’s day is like by snapping some images of their workstations, tech they use, and the office as a whole. Use your phone and pop these into Evernote or Dropbox to analyze later.

Analysis

11) Use Reframer to analyze your data

Qualitative research produces very powerful data, but it also produces a lot of it. It can take you and your team hours, even days, to go through it all.Use a qualitative research tool such as Reframer to tag your observations so you can easily build themes and find patterns in your data while saving hours of analysis. Tags might be related to a particular subject you’re discussing with a participant, a really valuable quote, or even certain problems your participants have encountered — it all depends on your project.

12) Make collaboration simple

Instead of spending hours writing up some of your findings on Post-it notes and sticking them up on a wall to discuss with your teammates, you can quickly and easily do this online with Trello or MURAL. This is definitely a big timesaver if you’ve got some team members who work remotely.

13) Make your findings easy to read

Presenting your findings to stakeholders can be difficult, and extremely time consuming if you need to explain it all in easy-to-understand terms. Save time and make it easier for your stakeholders by compiling your findings into an infographic, engaging data visualization, or slideshow presentation. Just make sure you bring all the stats you need to answer any questions from stakeholders.For more actionable tips and tricks from UX professionals all over the world, check out our latest ebook. Download and print out templates and checklists, and become a pro for your next user interview.Get our new ebook

Related reading

• "Individual interviews" - An article from Usability.gov explaining how, when, and why you should conduct user interviews with individuals.
• "Interviewing users" - A guide from Nielsen Norman Group showing us the situations in which user interviews are best suited, and the kind of information they can provide us.
• "Open-ended versus close-ended questions in user research" - Another article from Nielsen Norman Group explaining the differences in question types.