Ever poured your heart into a new feature, convinced it was a game-changer, only to watch it flop after launch? It’s a gut-wrenching feeling, and you’re not alone. This happens when we build products based on what we think people want, not what we know they need.

The good news? There’s a straightforward way to bridge that gap. Learning how to conduct user interviews is the single most effective way to stop building on assumptions and start building on real, human insights.

Think of this guide as your roadmap to turning simple conversations into powerful evidence that drives real results.

What Are User Interviews? - And Why Are They Important?

Image source: Contentsquare

At its core, a user interview is a qualitative research method where a researcher has a focused, one-on-one conversation with a user to understand their experiences, motivations, and pain points related to a product or service. But honestly, they're much more than that.

They are your direct line into your users' world, turning vague assumptions into solid evidence you can act on.

Properly conducted user interviews are a product superpower. They are the fastest way to build empathy and ensure you're solving real problems for real people, which ultimately drives business success.

That being said, here's why user interviews are crucial to your UX design process:

• Go beyond the numbers to find hidden needs: Your analytics dashboard is fantastic at telling you what users are doing: like where they click or how long they stay on a page, but it will never tell you why.
  
  For example, you might see a high drop-off rate on your signup page. The data flags the problem, but a user interview can reveal the cause: maybe the language is confusing, the value proposition is unclear, or a critical piece of information is missing.

  
  These "why" moments are golden nuggets that quantitative data simply can't provide. User interviews give you the rich, contextual stories behind the numbers, allowing you to address the root cause of an issue instead of just treating the symptoms. It’s this deep understanding that helps you uncover unspoken needs and new opportunities for innovation.
  
  
  

• Build real empathy: Empathy is the bedrock of user-centered design, and nothing builds it faster than hearing a customer describe their frustrations in their own words.

  
  

  When you listen to a real person talk about their challenges, it creates a powerful, visceral connection that a spreadsheet or a chart never will. It transforms abstract data points into a human story. This shared understanding gets your entire team; from engineers to marketers, rallied around solving actual human problems, not just clearing support tickets from a backlog.

  
  When the team feels the user's pain, they become more motivated and creative in finding elegant solutions. It ensures that the people building the product truly care about the people using it.
  
  
  

• Validate your big ideas before building them: Building features is expensive. Building the wrong features? That can be a business-killer. User interviews are your chance to stress-test your riskiest assumptions before a single line of code gets written or a single dollar is spent on development. They serve as a crucial reality check on your ideas and concepts.

  
  

  By talking to real, potential customers early in the process, you can confirm that the problem you think you're solving is one they genuinely care about and are willing to pay to fix.

  
  

  This simple validation step can save you an incredible amount of time, money, and heartache down the line. We actually have a whole guide on how many user interviews product teams should do before finding product-market fit that dives deeper into this.
  
  
  
  

• Let your users co-create your product roadmap: Your best product ideas often won't come from an internal brainstorming session; they'll come directly from your users.

  
  

  The rich, contextual stories you gather from interviews are direct inputs for your product roadmap. When you hear five different people describe the exact same pain point or workaround, that’s a massive signal telling you what to prioritize next.

  
  This process ensures your roadmap is guided by genuine customer demand rather than just internal opinions or what the competition is doing. It helps you focus your team's limited resources on features that will deliver the most value, resulting in a more useful, competitive, and successful product.
  
  
  

• Drives real business growth: At the end of the day, understanding your user leads to better business outcomes. It’s not just a fuzzy, feel-good activity; it has a measurable impact on the bottom line. Organizations that truly integrate user research into their workflow see huge, tangible benefits across the board.
  
  

  One user research report from Maze found that companies investing in user research see significant improvements: 83% report improved product usability, 63% note increased customer satisfaction, and 34% observe higher customer retention rates.

  
  Those aren't small numbers. They're proof that talking to your users is one of the smartest investments you can make for sustainable growth.
  
  

When to conduct user interviews?

Knowing when to conduct user interviews is just as important as knowing how. Timing is everything.

Deploying them at the right moments in the product development lifecycle ensures you get the most valuable insights when they can have the biggest impact.

Here are scenarios where you should conduct user interviews in your product design lifecycle:

• During the discovery phase: This is the very beginning of a project, before you’ve even settled on a solution. At this stage, your goal is pure exploration. You have a lot of assumptions and very few answers.

  
  Conducting generative interviews here helps you deeply understand the problem space, identify user pain points, and uncover unmet needs you might not have even known existed.

  
  The insights gathered here form the foundation for your entire product strategy, ensuring you’re solving a problem people actually have.
  
  

• Before & during the design: Once you have a potential solution or concept in mind, it's time to start validating. Before you invest heavily in detailed design and development, you can use evaluative interviews to test low-fidelity prototypes, wireframes, or even just a concept sketch.

  
  This allows you to get early feedback on whether your proposed solution is on the right track.

  As you move into more detailed design, continuing to interview users helps you refine the user experience, test usability, and ensure the features you're building are both intuitive and valuable.
  
  
  

• After launch to iterate & improve: The learning doesn't stop once your product is live. In fact, this is one of the best times to talk to your users. Post-launch interviews can help you understand how people are actually using your product in their real-world environment.

  
  You can learn what’s working well, what’s causing frustration, and what new features they wish they had.

  
  This continuous feedback loop is essential for iteration and ensuring your product evolves with your users' needs over time.
  
  

User Interview Formats

The structure you choose for your interview (or the format), dramatically shapes the conversation and the type of insights you’ll get. Each format serves a different purpose, moving from highly rigid to completely free-flowing.

Picking the right one depends entirely on your research goals and what you need to learn.

Here are the most common user interview formats used by product teams:

• Structured: This format is essentially a survey read aloud. You have a strict, predetermined script of questions, and you stick to it for every single participant without deviation.

  
  The questions are asked in the same order, making it fantastic for validating specific hypotheses or when you need to easily compare answers across a large group of users. The data you get leans more quantitative and is straightforward to analyze for patterns.

  
  However, its rigidity is also its biggest weakness, as it leaves no room for exploring unexpected comments or digging deeper into interesting tangents, limiting the depth of qualitative insights.
  
  

• Semi-structured: This is the workhorse of UX research, and for good reason: it’s the format even our team uses 90% of the time. The reason is simple: this approach strikes the perfect balance between focus and flexibility.
  
  You enter the conversation with an interview guide, a list of key topics and open-ended questions, but you have the freedom to ask follow-up questions, reorder things on the fly, and chase interesting tangents as they arise.

  
  This approach provides enough structure to ensure you meet your research objectives while allowing the user's story to guide the conversation. It’s ideal for digging into user needs, testing prototypes, and truly understanding the why behind their actions.
  
  
  

• Unstructured: Think of this less as an interview and more as a guided, free-flowing conversation. You might start with just a single high-level topic or prompt, but there is no script. The entire discussion flows organically, guided almost entirely by what the participant wants to talk about.
  
  

  This format shines in the earliest stages of discovery when you know next to nothing about a problem space and your main goal is pure empathy and exploration.

  
  While it can unearth incredibly deep, story-rich insights, the data is almost purely qualitative and can be a real challenge to synthesize and compare across different participants.
  
  

3 Types of User Interviews

Beyond the format, you need to be clear on your overall goal. What are you actually trying to learn? The type of interview you conduct aligns with your stage in the product development process, from generating new ideas to evaluating existing ones.

Here are the 3 most common types of user interviews:

1. Generative interviews

Image source: Medium

Also known as discovery or exploratory interviews, these are all about uncovering opportunities, unmet needs, and hidden pain points. You’re not testing a pre-defined solution here; you're trying to deeply understand a problem and the user's world.

The whole point is to "generate" fresh ideas and insights that will inform what you decide to build in the first place.

These interviews are crucial in the early stages of a project and almost always use a semi-structured or unstructured format to encourage open-ended storytelling and exploration.

2. Evaluative Interviews

Image source: Lyssna

Once you have a concept, a wireframe, or a clickable prototype, you shift into evaluation mode. The central question becomes, "Does this thing I've created actually work for people and solve their problem?" You’re testing your assumptions and getting direct feedback on how usable, desirable, and valuable your proposed solution is.

This type of interview helps you iterate and refine your design before investing heavily in development, saving significant time and resources.

Evaluative interviews typically use a semi-structured format, combining specific tasks with open-ended follow-up questions.

3. Contextual Inquiry

Image source: Userpeek

This is a special and powerful type of interview. It's a blend of observation and interviewing where you go to the user's natural environment: their office, home or workshop — and watch them perform their real tasks in their real context.

It’s one thing for someone to tell you how they do their job; it’s another thing entirely to see the sticky notes on their monitor, the interruptions they face, and the clever workarounds they’ve invented.

This method provides a layer of rich context that you simply can't get in a lab setting or over a video call.

How to Conduct User Interviews? - A Stepwise Breakdown

A truly great user interview feels like a natural conversation, but don’t be fooled, it's built on a solid, structured process. Having a clear roadmap is what separates a friendly chat from a session that delivers high-quality, unbiased insights.

Let's walk through the key stages of the user interview process:

1. Define your goals

Before you even think about scheduling a call, you must know why you're doing this. What are the specific, burning questions that need answers? Going in with a vague goal like "learn what users want" will only get you vague, unhelpful feedback.

You need to get laser-focused. Are you trying to understand the workflow your customers use to complete a specific task? Or are you testing whether a new feature concept actually solves a real-world problem?

A sharp, clear goal acts as your North Star for the entire process. It guides every decision you make from here on out, from who you recruit to the specific questions you ask.

Writing down 2-3 clear research questions will keep your interview focused and ensure you get the actionable insights you need.

2. Decide the interview type

With your goals locked in, you can now pick the right interview format and type. This decision is critical because it shapes the entire conversation and the kind of data you'll end up with.

For instance, if your goal is to explore a new problem space and uncover unmet needs, a generative interview using a semi-structured format is perfect. You’ll have the flexibility to follow interesting tangents and dig deep into user stories.

On the other hand, if you have a prototype ready and your goal is to get direct feedback on its usability, an evaluative interview is your best bet. Choosing the right approach is a huge part of knowing how to conduct user interviews that actually deliver value.

3. Recruit the right participants

Here’s a hard truth: you can have the best questions in the world, but they mean nothing if you're asking the wrong people. Your participants must be a true representation of your target users. It's the classic "garbage in, garbage out" scenario. The best way to find the right people is with a screener survey that filters participants based on specific demographics, behaviors, and experiences relevant to your research goal.

Once you've found your participants, building rapport is everything. People share more openly when they feel comfortable and respected. Start the interview with a friendly tone, walk them through the process, and make it crystal clear that there are no wrong answers.

Your job is to create a safe, judgment-free space for total honesty. This initial connection is crucial for getting authentic insights.

4. Plan your questions

Now it's time to build your interview guide. The secret here is to lean heavily on open-ended questions. Ditch "yes/no" questions like, "Is this feature useful?" Instead, try something like, "Can you walk me through the last time you tried to accomplish [task]?"

This simple switch from a closed question to an open-ended one encourages storytelling, which is where the real gold is.

Stories are packed with context, emotion, and tiny details that simple answers just can't provide. Your questions should prompt people to talk about real, past experiences, not just speculate about what they might do in the future.

This helps you understand what they actually do, not just what they say they do, giving you much more reliable data to work with.

5. Consider your interview environment

Where you hold the interview can make or break the conversation. Whether you’re meeting in person or, more commonly, conducting it remotely over a video call, the environment needs to be quiet, private, and distraction-free, for both you and the participant. A calm setting helps the user focus and feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts.

It's also crucial to get your tech sorted out ahead of time. Test your video conferencing software, check your recording devices (with permission!), and have your note-taking app ready to go.

When the technology works smoothly, the conversation flows naturally without awkward interruptions, keeping the focus entirely on the user's story and their valuable insights.

6. Run the interview

When the interview starts, your main job is to listen. I mean really listen. As a rule of thumb, you should be talking less than 20% of the time. You are there to guide the conversation, not dominate it.

Let the user lead the way. If they say something interesting, don't be afraid to go off-script and ask follow-up questions like, "Why was that?" or "Can you tell me more about that moment?" These little nudges can uncover the most valuable insights.

Pay attention not just to what they say, but how they say it. Note their tone of voice, any hesitations, and their body language (if on video). These non-verbal cues often reveal underlying emotions and motivations that words alone can't express.

For more great tips on mastering this part of the process, you can find more practical strategies on how to conduct effective interviews.

7. Share findings with colleagues

The work isn't over when you hang up the call. The final, and arguably most important, step is to synthesize your notes and share what you learned with your team. A brain dump of raw notes is just noise; your job is to find the key patterns, recurring themes, and actionable takeaways that will drive decisions.

Present your findings in a way that’s easy for everyone to digest. Use powerful direct quotes and short video clips to bring the user's voice into the room and build empathy across the company.

This ensures that the valuable insights you worked so hard to gather actually get used to make smart, user-centered decisions, rather than getting lost in a forgotten document.

Tips to Conduct User Interviews Effectively

Knowing the steps is one thing, but mastering the art of the conversation is what truly separates good research from great research.

These expert tips will help you create a dynamic where users feel comfortable sharing their honest, unfiltered thoughts.

Here's some practical tips to conduct user interviews to power your UX design process:

• Make the user comfortable: Your number one job at the start of any interview is to create a relaxed, safe environment. Before diving into your questions, spend a few minutes building rapport with some light, friendly conversation: ask them about their day or something interesting they've been working on.
  
  Always start by reassuring them that there are no right or wrong answers and that you're simply interested in their personal experiences.

  
  An anxious participant gives guarded, surface-level answers. A comfortable participant opens up and shares the rich, detailed stories you’re actually looking for. This simple act of building trust is non-negotiable.
  
  

• Leave room for the interviewee to lead: While you have an interview guide, some of the most powerful insights come from unexpected detours. When a participant mentions something that piques your interest, don't be afraid to follow that thread.

  
  A simple, "Could you tell me a bit more about that?" can unlock a wealth of information. More importantly, get comfortable with silence. After a participant finishes a thought, just pause for a few extra seconds.

  
  It might feel awkward at first, but that small gap gives them space to reflect and often encourages them to elaborate on their point, revealing a deeper layer of thinking.
  
  
  

• Prepare questions beforehand: Walking into an interview unprepared is a recipe for disaster. You absolutely need a well-thought-out interview guide to make sure you hit all your research objectives and maintain focus. Think of it less as a rigid script and more as your roadmap for the conversation.

  
  Planning helps you structure the flow logically, usually starting with broad, open-ended questions before narrowing down to more specific ones as the interview progresses.

  
  Our guide on crafting effective user testing questions is a fantastic resource for building a script that ensures you don’t miss any critical topics and get the most out of your time.
  
  
  

• Anticipate different responses & conduct follow-ups based on your goals: A great interviewer is also a great listener who can adapt on the fly. While you have your main questions prepared, you should also anticipate the different directions the conversation might go.

  
  When a user gives you a response, think about how it relates back to your core research goals. Use follow-up questions to dig deeper into relevant points.

  
  Phrases like "Why do you think that is?" or "How did that make you feel?" can turn a simple answer into a profound insight. This dynamic approach ensures you’re not just checking boxes but are actively pursuing the most valuable information.
  
  
  

• Write thought-provoking questions: Your goal isn't just to get answers; it's to spark stories. Instead of asking a closed question like, "Do you like this feature?" which will probably just get you a "yes" or "no," rephrase it to be more thought-provoking.

  
  Ask something like, "Can you walk me through the last time you used a feature like this?" or "Tell me about a time you felt frustrated trying to accomplish [task]."

  
  This simple change prompts the person to recall a specific memory, complete with all the context, emotion, and detail that comes with it. Good questions dig into past behaviors, not future hypotheticals.
  
  
  

• Avoid leading, closed, or vague questions: The way you phrase a question can unintentionally influence the answer and introduce bias. A leading question, like "Wouldn't it be great if you could do X?" nudges the user toward a positive response. A closed question, like "Did you find that easy?" limits them to a yes/no answer.

  
  Vague questions, like "What do you think of the design?" are too broad to yield specific insights. Instead, focus on neutral, specific, and open-ended questions like, "What were your thoughts as you went through that process?" or "What, if anything, was confusing about that page?"
  
  

• Prepare more questions than you think you'll have time to ask: It's always better to be over-prepared. Sometimes, a participant might give very concise answers, and you’ll move through your planned questions faster than expected.

  
  Having a backlog of secondary or "nice-to-have" questions ready ensures that you can use the entire scheduled time effectively without any awkward lulls. This also gives you the flexibility to skip questions that a participant's earlier answers have already made redundant.

  
  Rank your questions by priority so you can be sure to cover the most critical topics first, then move to your secondary questions if time allows.
  
  
  

• Make notes about the user's response & how they respond: Effective note-taking is a critical skill for a user interviewer. You want to capture not only what the user says but also how they say it.

  
  Pay attention to their tone of voice, their hesitations, and their body language if you're on a video call. Did they sound excited when describing one feature but frustrated when talking about another?

  
  These non-verbal cues are valuable data points that provide emotional context to their words. Using a note-taking partner can be incredibly helpful, allowing one person to focus on the conversation while the other captures these rich details.
  
  
  

• Debrief the interviewee: As you wrap up the interview, always leave a few minutes at the end for a debrief. Ask the participant, "Is there anything else you'd like to share that we haven't talked about?" This one question can sometimes yield the most surprising and valuable insights of the entire session.

  
  

  It gives the user a final opportunity to voice any thoughts that didn't fit neatly into your questions.

  
  

  Also, be sure to thank them sincerely for their time and feedback, explain the next steps (like when they can expect their incentive), and confirm they have your contact information if any follow-up questions arise.
  
  

Drawbacks of User Interviews

User interviews are an incredible tool, but they aren't a silver bullet. Being honest about their limitations is crucial for any product team.

Recognizing these drawbacks helps you decide when to use interviews and, just as importantly, when to pair them with other UX design methodologies to get a complete, unbiased picture.

Here they are:

1. They can be a major time & resource sink: Let’s be real: good user interviews take a lot of work. The entire process: from carefully planning your goals and questions, to recruiting the right participants, to conducting the sessions, and finally to synthesizing hours of recordings, is a significant investment of time and energy.

   
   Each conversation requires thoughtful preparation beforehand and meticulous analysis afterward to extract the valuable insights.

   
   This heavy lift means you can't run interviews for every small question. For large-scale validation, a survey is often more efficient. It’s the classic trade-off between the rich, deep insights from a few people and the broad, quantitative data from many.

   
   

2. Chances of interviewer bias: We’re all human, which means we bring our own biases into the room, whether we realize it or not. One of the biggest traps for a researcher is confirmation bias, or our subconscious tendency to hear what we want to hear and interpret comments in a way that supports our existing hypotheses.

   
   For instance, asking a leading question like, "This new design is much clearer, isn't it?" is basically asking for a "yes." To combat this, you have to be disciplined.

   
   Stick to neutral, open-ended questions, practice active listening, and have a second person take notes to provide a different perspective.
   
   

3. The "Say-Do Gap": A fundamental challenge in user research is the famous "say-do gap." People are often unreliable narrators of their own behavior. They might forget how they really perform a task, describe an idealized version of their process, or simply try to give you the answer they think you’re looking for to be helpful.

   
   A user might swear they meticulously organize their files every day, but an observational study would reveal their desktop is pure chaos.

   
   That’s why pairing interviews with observational methods like contextual inquiry or usability testing is so powerful: it helps close the gap between what someone says and what they actually do.
   
   

4. Small sample sizes limit generalization: Because interviews are so time-intensive, you can typically only conduct them with a small, focused group of people (often 5-8 participants per user segment). This is fantastic for uncovering deep qualitative insights and understanding the "why" behind behaviors.

   
   However, it's a huge mistake to assume that what you learn from five people can be generalized to your entire user base of five thousand. The goal of qualitative interviews isn't statistical significance; it's about identifying patterns and generating hypotheses.

   
   To understand how many users feel a certain way, you need to follow up with quantitative methods like surveys or analytics.
   
   

Conclusion

Ultimately, learning how to conduct user interviews is what separates teams that guess from teams that know. It’s about shifting your entire mindset from building on assumptions to building on a genuine, unshakeable understanding of your users' needs.

When you start applying these practical steps, you’ll uncover the kinds of insights that lead to products people actually love.

To know more about how Bricx can power your product strategy with targeted user interviews & research, book a call now!

FAQs

How many user interviews should I conduct?

This is a classic question! For most qualitative studies, you'll start hitting a point of diminishing returns after interviewing 5-8 people from a specific user group. The goal is to reach "thematic saturation," which is the point where you start hearing the same patterns, pain points, and ideas repeatedly.

Once a new interview doesn't bring many new surprises, you've likely uncovered the core insights for that segment. It's about depth, not volume.

How do I find the right people to interview?

Finding the right participants is crucial. The best approach is to start with a short screener survey to filter people based on specific behaviors, demographics, and experiences that match your target user profile.

You can distribute this survey to your existing customer list, post on social media channels where your audience hangs out (like LinkedIn for B2B), or use dedicated recruiting platforms like User Interviews or Respondent. Always offer a fair incentive to show you value their time.

What's the best way to take notes during an interview?

First, always get explicit permission to record the session (audio and/or video). This frees you up to focus on the conversation rather than frantically trying to write everything down. During the interview, jot down key quotes, observations about body language, and moments that stand out.

Having a second person act as a dedicated note-taker is ideal. Afterward, use a transcription service to get a searchable text document, and then use a collaborative tool like Miro for affinity mapping to find patterns in the data.

How do I avoid asking leading questions?

Avoiding bias is a key skill. A leading question suggests a particular answer (e.g., "Don't you think this feature is really useful?"). To avoid this, frame your questions to be open-ended and neutral. Instead of asking about a solution, ask about their past behavior.

For example, instead of "Would you use a button that does X?", ask "Tell me about the last time you tried to accomplish X. What did that process look like for you?" This focuses on their experience, not your idea.