Benefits and Goals
User Discovery Interviews are an effective UX Research methodology that serves to gain an understanding of the industry, mindset, values, and goals of the end-users without getting into specific processes, which is what UX Contextual Inquiry or UX Shadowing is for. Simply put, the goal of User Discovery Interviews is to validate the problem that your software is trying to solve while creating empathy with the end-users.
User Discovery Interviews are most effectively done after a UX Listening Tour, but before digging into your software regardless of whether the goal is to add new features or to optimize existing features. The idea is to validate general product and problem space hypotheses before doing any designs. This ensures that what is being worked on is the correct thing, which in turn saves money and time down the road and reduces wasted effort.
Who to Involve In User Discovery Interviews
Your existing end-users are a great starting point. They also have access to their peers, who might be potential end-users. The latter is a better subset to prioritize because the former tend to think within the constraints of the existing software, rather than sharing their whole end to end high-level thinking and goals. This minor issue can be mitigated with good instruction and explanation to the research participants.
How User Discovery Interviews Are Done Remotely
UX Discovery Interviews are done on one-on-one video calls once the participants are identified, sourced, and scheduled. There is a User Interview Guide consisting of questions designed to test specific hypotheses, although the actual interview should be free-flowing and should feel like a Late Night Talk Show host who happens to be a very curious therapist, digging deeper in the perfect moments. This balance is an art that’s perfected over time.
Deliverables and Outcomes of User Discovery Interviews
The deliverable will include key takeaways from the interviews finding commonalities in user priorities, thinking, goals, values, and high-level processes. As well as answers to specific hypotheses that were formed and included as part of the conversation guide. Journey Maps might be included as part of the deliverables to visually depict the end to end process of the end-users with regards to their goals, as well as any other visual tools deemed appropriate to the findings. The output of User Discovery Interviews can also be used to form User Personas, which can be used to further identify research subjects for other forms of UX Research that might follow.
If you want to find out if User Discovery Interviews are appropriate for your organization’s needs, feel free to reach out to us! Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with our UX Research series.