What is User interview?
A user interview is a one-on-one conversation with a current or potential user, designed to understand their behaviors, motivations, needs, frustrations, and mental models through open-ended questions.
How it works
Effective user interviews use open-ended questions (‘Tell me about the last time you…’), follow-up probes (‘What made you decide to do that?’), and concrete incidents rather than hypothetical scenarios. Key techniques include asking about specific past behavior rather than general preferences, using the ‘five whys’ to dig beneath surface responses, staying silent after answers to encourage elaboration, and avoiding leading questions. Interviews typically last 45-60 minutes and are recorded for later analysis. The goal is not to ask users what they want (they often cannot articulate this) but to understand their current behavior and unmet needs deeply enough to design better solutions.
Applied example
A banking app team interviews 15 users about managing money. They do not ask ‘Would you like a budgeting feature?’ Instead, they ask ‘Walk me through how you handled your finances last month.’ The stories reveal that most users check their balance obsessively but have no system for tracking spending, suggesting a passive spending awareness feature rather than an active budgeting tool.
Why it matters
User interviews provide the foundational understanding of user behavior and motivation that informs all other design activities, revealing the ‘why’ behind behavior that quantitative methods cannot access.
