While it’s obvious that UX research is essential to any UX design process, you might be surprised at how many people don’t get the UX research interview questions right.
Yes, we get that conducting a UX research interview can be daunting, especially if you’re new to the process. But asking the right user research questions can give you incredible results. Sometimes even world-changing!
Asking the wrong ones… well, have you seen that episode of The Simpsons where Homer designs a car?
Yeah… don’t be that.
It’s ok though. tl;dv is here like a cool older sibling. We’ve conducted those interviews, asked those questions, and have the cheat sheet of questions for you below. It’s ok, you can thank us later.
Oh, and the VERY, VERY, VERY first bit of advice is, please, for the love of criminy, WRITE YOUR QUESTIONS DOWN!
We want you to go in prepared, ready, and willing to go. This is where tl;dv is particularly ✨amazing✨ and captures all your interviews, transcribes them, documents them, and stores them all, ready for you to go.
That’s right, no more taking notes, playing around with recording devices, and second-guessing your colleague’s half-assed notes.
tl;dv captures every word of your speakers, automatically transcribing them. You can even mark moments with the click of a button (or keyboard short-cut if you’re feeling fancy).
That means 110% ACCURATE notes without distracting from the meeting itself. #sexynotetaking
UX Research Questions
What is UX Research?
But just before we get into the good stuff, on the off-chance, you’ve stumbled upon here and are like… “What on earth is UX research?!” here is a quick summary.
The simplest way of explaining UX research is the study of what end-users of a system or product need and want. You can collect this information in many ways, and interviewing end-users is one of the most valuable places to get data.
When you’ve conducted a UX research interview you take that information and start to design with all that lovely data for reference. You can then go back to the users, ask again, tweak, test, and repeat until you get an amazing product.
If it weren’t for UX research, the device you are reading on wouldn’t be so seamless, and those yummy snacks you’re thinking of wouldn’t taste SO good.
Ok, it’s a LOT more complicated than that, but it’s important and the foundation to getting your product or service just right. With UX research you can find out your customer’s “pain points”, discover their true desires, and ensure that what you are creating is – ultimately – what they want and need.
But the thing is, do people actually know what they want? Well, yes… and no.
Questions UX researchers would ask to test their products are a bit more complex than “Do you like it?” Respondents will tell little lies to researchers, researchers may infer something completely different from what was said.
Essentially asking the RIGHT questions is key to successful research.
Crucial Questions To Ask Every User During UX Research Interview
What are your thoughts on the current design of the product?
Simple but effective. You’ll get the right down-the-line answers with this, and prevent people from just saying “Yeah”. A simple barometer question but starts off things nice and easy.
How easy or difficult is it to use the product?
Another great rangefinder question. You’ll get some straightforward answers like “Yes, it was easy”, or get more detail on some of the negatives. You can then ask respondents to elaborate more and you’ll also find it easy to discover ease-of-use trends here.
What do you like/dislike about the product?
This question is great for perception. While they may find your product easy to use, they may still hate it with a vengeance. Using responses from this, correlated with other demographic details can help you uncover trends and little foibles of particular end-user segments.
Have you ever encountered any problems while using the product? If so, what were they?
This is a very revealing question when it comes to design flaws. You know those buttons that are hard to click, the bit that always catches on something, the drop-down menus that end up in a never-ending loop. Yep, this question could have solved all those….
Is there anything you normally do together with X [the main action that the product is helping the user to do] that you can’t do with the product? Tell me about it.
This particular question will help to reveal anything fundamentally wrong with the product… or just show you how woefully incorrect your perception of how people use it is.
How do you feel about the overall User Experience of the product?
A great summarizer question after asking others gives your respondents a chance to really think about how they’ve used it and put it into words.
You’ve been using [name of the product] for a while now, what kind of information or tricks would you have loved to have when you started using the product?
The best way to get to know a product is by watching or finding out how other people use it. A quick Google will show you reams of content on tips, tricks, and hacks for products. This question gives you a better insight into what your end-users find important and useful.
How does the product compare to similar products on the market?
Tough to hear, but imperative to know. If your respondents all say lovely things but you don’t ask them about the competition, then more fool you. Equally, be aware that a question like this may lead to some people telling a white lie about how amazing your product is. Don’t take the responses in a silo.
If you had to explain to another person what is [name of the product] and what is it for, what would you say?
This is a great question to work out what the perception of the product is and how it would be shared with a peer in terms of the language used, and recommendations.
How often do you use the product?
This kind of question will reveal the value of the product to your interviewee in terms of time and usefulness. Is it a daily-use thing, or is it something they’ll just use sometimes?
Where do you usually use the product?
Work, home, outside, inside – wherever your user is using your product, this can help reveal additional functionality and avenues to explore with design and usage.
When do you usually use the product?
This can be insightful whether it’s about the time of day or particular instances where the users may need it.
What do you use [name of the product] for?
A question like this helps you to see, and explore, the Job to be done and take a look at mental models. As revealed in some of the other questions, this kind of question can help reveal if your users use it differently than its original design intention. Fun bonus fact, bubble wrap was originally designed as a fancy 3D wallpaper.
When was the last time you used our product? Tell me about this experience (when, where, difficulties, positive surprises)
This question helps the user to give a narrative view of using the product and improve recall. Using prompts such as location, sights, sounds, and smells that can be brought up when recounting an experience, can open up neural pathways and help them remember important details of their encounter with the product. It’s great for finding little details.
Is there anything you normally do together with X [the main action that the product is helping the user to do] that you can’t do with the product? Tell me about it.
Questions like this help to identify missing features and opportunities. While an individual response here is one thing, it’s particularly important to look at the data over a larger segment to identify any overall themes.
If you had a magic wand and you could instantly X [the main action that the product is helping the user to do], how would that change your life?
This question helps the interviewer to understand the impact and benefits of the product in the customer’s life. Is it a life-changer, just help a teeny bit, or just pure an unadulterated bouji luxury?
What’s your challenge number 1 when it comes to X [the main action that the product is helping the user to do]? Why is it so challenging?
This question helps the interviewer to understand the pain points and why these are challenges for the customer.
If [name of the product] didn’t exist, how would you do X? How were you doing it before you discovered [name of the product]
This question helps the interviewer to understand the natural workarounds customers use to achieve the same goal.
Let’s open [name of the product], what’s the thing that catches your attention in the first place and why?
This question helps to catch the answers to people’s first thoughts on viewing a product. What are people drawn to? Is it a good thing? A bad thing? Does it give over the correct perception of what the product is about?
And some Questions NOT to ask in a UX Interview
Not all questions are created equal. And if you see these questions on your list for a UX research interview, here’s why you should cross them out right away.
Do you think it’s a good product?
Closed questions are never going to go well. “Yes, no… maybe?” tells you nothing about the intent behind their reasoning, and will explain even less about usability. Also, the answers to these will be more about bias than anything else. Other questions include “Is it easy to use?”, “Would you recommend it to a friend?”, and other Yes/No questions. Don’t do it!
Do you have any suggestions on how we could make the product more user-friendly?
Many people will happily answer this… but how many of those people are designers? By asking this question, while you’re opening up for user feedback you are also potentially ending up with requests that can be too much and, well, it’s kind of your job to answer this one!
What could be done to improve the UX of the product?
Again, the interviewee is not the designer. Each interviewee will come with their own set of experiences, likes, dislikes, and prejudices. They may HATE a feature but actually most people would love it.
What features would you like to see added or removed from the product?
A question like this runs the risk of making people tear apart the nature of the product and make suggestions to turn it into something else. I think everybody would agree that if you added a function to clean your whole house to a tea kettle, while useful for us, it’s probably not what the tea kettle manufacturer originally had in mind.
Is there anything else you would like to tell us about the product?
Much like the first question was too closed, this is too broad. This could end up with hours spent listening to interviewees tell you ALL their feelings, or with interviewees just saying “No” and mentally checking out of the interview process. It’s an overwhelming product question almost akin to “What is the meaning of life?”
Tips, Tricks & Notes About Coming Up With UX Research Questions
The above questions are just a guideline and won’t necessarily be relevant for every product, service, test, or company.
However, if you have been inspired to come up with your own questions from the above, amazing! With that in mind, there are a few key things to note about creating, and conducting UX research interviews.
Asking open questions is key
The devil is in the detail, and you’re more likely to get interesting bits of information from people who are given the space, and freedom to elaborate.
Don’t make them too broad
You want to keep the interviewee on topic. It’s lovely to hear about their trip to Egypt, but not when it’s meant to be time discussing the user interface of a smart vending machine. Succinct, relevant, and not too off-topic, please.
Don’t scare them with jargon
Depending on your product and the types of users you will be interviewing, there may be an expected level of knowledge here. However, make sure that your questions aren’t overly technical.
Don’t talk down to them
Equally, don’t speak to expert end-users as if they are toddlers. If you are looking at a specialist item, and require a specialist answer, then the participants you select are probably going to be familiar with a lot of detail in that niche. Don’t make assumptions about their current knowledge, but don’t go in at entry level.
No leading questions
Everybody is biased. Even the most impartial person in the world probably has some strong feelings about the topic of impartiality. By asking leading questions in a UX research interview you are doing yourself, your interviewee, and the whole UX process a disservice. It will skew the answers, and lead the interviewee to offer up demand characteristics.
Making the most of the UX Interview Experience
UX research interviews can make good products great, save products from tanking, and foster an inclusive and democratic process when it comes to product design. The questions asked, and the answers given, can change the entire scope of the project so it’s key to get them right. This will not only lead to success in the marketplace, but also for your end-users.
And, making sure you have all that valuable insight, organized, recorded, and ready to reference is key.
Using an awesome tool such as tl;dv (which has been created thanks to lots of lovely UX research interviews and testing with the questions above!) means you can keep all that crucial information in one place.
And even better its first tier is free to use! Just simply get an extension to download Google Meet recordings or even download Zoom meetings and you’re good to go!
Happy interviewing and we can’t wait to show you how incredibly handy that UX research is with tl;dv’s awesome (end-user driven!) features.
