User Interview Template
Capture relevant details from discussions with current or potential customers. The user interview is a great tool to gain insights and improve your product.
About the User Interview Template
The user interview template is where you can keep track of your user interviews, adding the questions, answers, and any other information you might find helpful to build a profile of your user and conduct user research.
What is a user interview?
User interviews are a UX research technique where researchers ask users questions about a topic. You can use the user interview template to prepare your questions and take note of the interviewee’s responses. It allows your team to quickly and easily collect user data, and it’s also a great way to learn more about who uses your product.
When to conduct user interviews
Product teams, UX designers and writers gather background data to understand how people use technology. It’s a way to take a snapshot of how users interact with a product, understand user objectives and motivations, and find users’ pain points.
It’s an important step when developing or iterating an existing service or product. That’s why marketing, business, and development teams often find it helpful to conduct a user interview to gain insights and develop better strategies and solutions.
Benefits of conducting user interviews
There are many advantages to conducting user interviews, especially if you are developing a product or improving a service. It allows researchers to understand the user experience, gives a clear picture of a product’s usability, and enables companies to gather demographic or ethnographic data that can be used to create user personas.
Who should implement the user interview template
Two UX researchers, product managers, or other product team members generally conduct user interviews. That doesn't mean that other people can’t join the process; marketing researchers and strategists may also take part in the interview as listeners and take notes to develop a user persona.
How to structure your user interview
Start explaining the purpose of the interview. Tell the interviewee what you plan to cover and what you’re trying to accomplish in the interview. Then explain how user data will be used afterward.
Afterward, start your interview. Make sure you’re not priming the interviewee at any point during the conversation. For example, if you’re trying to figure out how people are using your podcast app, ask them, “Do you use any podcast apps?” rather than “How often are you using our podcast app?”
A good practice is to create space for answers to flourish, and by that, we mean asking open-ended questions so they can elaborate on their answers. Another tip is to try keeping the interview short, under an hour.
At the end of the interview, thank the user for coming and give them the opportunity to ask any questions of their own.
Common user interview questions
Tell me about your background.
How often do you use [similar products in our space]?
When you are using these products, do you encounter any challenges?
What are the most important tasks you perform while using these products?
Is there anything you wish you could do with these products which is currently not possible?
Are there any ways these products do not support your current needs?
Set up your own user interview template
The user interview template is designed to capture the most relevant information from your user interviews. In addition to the details of the interview and interviewee, you may want to include questions asked and topics covered, as well as user observations and feedback and key takeaways or action points for your team.
The user interview template can also be referred to later and used as a strategic tool to develop a complete customer journey map. Share your user interview template with your team and stakeholders and ask for feedback or brainstorm based on your findings to gain insights.
How do you create user interview questions?
Depending on what you are trying to discover, you can direct your interview differently. When creating user interview questions, some standard practices include asking open-ended questions that require more than a single word answer and questions that make you understand your user’s tasks. Another important thing to remember is to ask about their feelings, opinions, and pain points regarding a specific topic. You can also ask them to compare services or explain how they compare to another similar experience.
How many participants do you need for user interviews?
You can conduct the interview yourself, but UX and research teams commonly gather together to observe and make notes. Ideally, you would have one more person with you at the interview.
Get started with this template right now.
Easter Egg Retrospective
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Retrospectives, Meetings
The Easter Egg Retrospective template offers a themed approach to retrospectives, incorporating elements of the Easter holiday. It provides elements for reflecting on past iterations, hunting for hidden insights, and brainstorming improvements. This template enables teams to have fun while addressing serious topics, fostering creativity and collaboration. By promoting a playful yet productive atmosphere, the Easter Egg Retrospective empowers teams to uncover hidden gems, drive improvement, and strengthen team cohesion effectively.
Design Critique Template
Works best for:
UX Design
If you are a designer or part of a design team, a design critique session is one of the best ways to get actionable feedback and improve your design thought process. Use the Design Critique Template to guide you and your team through the session and make sure your design solutions reach the desired outcomes.
Perceptual Map Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Desk Research, Mapping
To shape your messaging, tailor your marketing, improve your product, and build your brand, you have to know your customers’ perceptions — what they think of you and your competitors. You can gain those insights by exploring a perceptual map. This simple, powerful tool creates a visual representation of how customers rank your price, performance, safety, and reliability. Put this template to work and you’ll be able to size up your competition, see gaps in the market, and understand changes in customer behavior and purchasing decisions.
Service Experience Observation Sheet
Works best for:
Research & Design
The Expanded Service Blueprint provides a detailed view of your service processes and interactions. This template is ideal for comprehensive service analysis and improvement. Use it to align teams, visualize the customer journey, and identify opportunities for optimization. It's perfect for enhancing service delivery, fostering collaboration, and ensuring a seamless and efficient service experience for your customers.
Timeline Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Flowcharts, Project Planning
A timeline displays a chronological order of important dates, and scheduled events. Timelines help product managers, project managers, and team members tell visual stories about progress and obstacles. Timelines enable teams to see at a glance what happened before, what progress is happening now, and what needs tackling in the future. Projects or products with specific purpose or deliverables should be based on a timeline to be successful. Use the timeline as a shared reference for start dates, end dates, and milestones.
Plus Delta Template
Works best for:
Software Development, Meetings, Retrospectives
The Plus Delta template is a simple but powerful tool for collecting constructive criticism from a group. The format encourages you and your team to focus on what went well, what you should repeat in the future, and what you should aim to change. To complete a Plus Delta template, simply make note of things that are working and things you would like to improve. You can then file these elements into two separate columns. Use Plus Delta to showcase wins and learnings for your team, stakeholders, employees, and bosses.