While doing user research, you often take interviews. And if you’re accustomed to taking a lot of interviews, chances are, you struggle a bit with them and often get lost on what to ask, or ask incorrectly. But nothing to worry about as today we’ll be discussing how to ask the right user research questions.
Thanks to Tegra for their awesome guide here. So, without further ado, let’s learn how to ask the right user research questions.
Start with warm-up questions
Start your session with simple, friendly, lightweight questions before diving deep into the topics you want to uncover. You want to open them up so that they feel comfortable opening up to you. Remember that they are real people and might need some time adjusting and to open up to you.
Example:
- How are you today?
- What do you do for a living?
- How often do you use your computer at home?
Avoid leading questions
A common mistake when framing questions is to let your own opinion get in the way of extracting impartial, unbiased results. You need to unlearn some things and let go of your assumptions. Here is an example of a bad and a good question:
Bad Question:
Why do you enjoy using our product so much?
Good Question:
How was your experience using our product?
Ask about specific moments in the past
Users are better able to recall their past experiences when thinking about a specific moment resulting in answers that are less generic and momre accurate.
Example:
The last time you used our bookmark feature, how was your experience?
Anticipate different responses
If the user didn’t have a response to your question, would you just skip it? Prepare a series of simpler questions to guide your users in talking about their experiences and providing a more detailed answer.
Ask open-ended questions
Open ended questions will gather more information and more complete answers as you’re allowing the user to give their take on the question and they’ll answer more than you asked for. This will also avoid any unproductive interview sessions. An example of a bad and good question is written below:
Bad Question:
Do you like our new feature?
Good question:
What do you think about our new feature?
See the difference? In the bad question, you’re restricting the user to answer a yes or no answer. Whereas in the good question, you’re asking for their real opinion and what’s their take on it.
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