Qualitative interviews are one of the most important tools for product teams, and one of the biggest mistakes that beginners make is assuming that interviews are just chatting, ignoring pre-planning. After an unstructured interview, it may be difficult to organize and analyze the data collected. For researchers, establishing a good structure for interviews is also a way to align expectations with stakeholders.

This article will share several interview structures that focus on product design, as well as the situations in which they are applicable.

#Rapid validation

Regular discovery interviews conducted by a team of PM, designer, and engineer (or multiple engineers) is the most recommended user research method in the product bible Inspired. Having a development team that closely collaborates greatly accelerate innovation. The focus is on quickly conducting discovery activities (finding the most worthwhile products to develop). When the team agrees on the problem that the product needs to solve, combined with the following interview structure, it is arguably the current best practice for product teams.

a. Inspired-style interview

The structure is as follows:

A short interview is conducted to confirm that the interviewee does encounter the problem you want to solve. Usability testing can help interviewees understand the entire product (of course, it also looks for usability issues). Finally, they will be able to accurately measure the value of this product.

Interviews and usability testing are familiar to most designers and PMs, but what is value testing?

Value testing methods include:

1. Use money to demonstrate value — such as observing whether the interviewee will actually take out their credit card to check out, or sign a non-binding letter of intent to buy.
2. Use reputation to demonstrate value — such as asking interviewees to share on social media or send it to their boss or colleagues.
3. Use time to demonstrate value — ask to schedule a longer time with the interviewee to make this product better together (especially suitable for B2B). People who really want to solve this problem are usually willing to do so.

The above methods are just testing methods, and it is not really necessary for the interviewee to actually pay or meet you every week. We should intentionally raise the threshold of value tests and make it slightly difficult to do, so that the value of this product can really be demonstrated.

Of course, in some cases, you can ask directly, such as how valuable do you think the product is to you? Please rate it on a scale of 1-7. Although direct questioning is more convenient, the participants may not want to say unpleasant things to the moderator. The actual behavior has way more evidentiary power than words. Therefore, I would recommend the rating method only when there are many concepts to test at once, for ease of collection and comparison.

Finally, the conditions for passing and failing the value test must be determined before the interview (e.g., if we have 6 or more out of 10 participants placed an order, the test is successful), and cannot be determined afterwards, in order to make objective and rapid decisions.

P.S. If possible, bring an engineer, something amazing may happen.