UR
User Interviews
A practical research method for understanding how people think, behave, and make decisions in a real context.
How to use user interviews to uncover real behaviour, decision-making, and pain points instead of relying on opinion or assumption.
What it is
User interviews are a qualitative UX serviceUser ResearchUnderstand user behaviour, validate ideas, and make clearer product decisions with evidence you can act on.Open service method used to understand glossaryUser BehaviourUser behaviour refers to how users interact with a product, including actions, patterns, and decision-making processes.Open glossary term, motivations, and decision-making through direct conversation.
They are a core part of serviceUser ResearchUnderstand user behaviour, validate ideas, and make clearer product decisions with evidence you can act on.Open service and are used to uncover how people think, what they do, and why they do it.
They are not about collecting opinions. They are about understanding real experiences.
At a surface level, people will often give answers that sound reasonable. At a deeper level, they reveal what actually drives their glossaryBehaviourBehaviour refers to how users interact with a system, including actions, patterns, and responses.Open glossary term.
The goal is to understand what people have done, why they did it, and what got in their way.
The value of interviews is not in what sounds reasonable. It is in what reveals what actually drives behaviour.
When to use it
Use this method when you need depth and glossaryContextContext is the set of surrounding conditions that shape how someone behaves and decides, including their goal, their environment, their time pressure, and what happened immediately before. The same action can mean different things in different contexts.Open glossary term that analytics or glossaryQuantitative DataQuantitative data is numerical information used to measure behaviour and performance, collected through analytics, metrics, and structured surveys. It supports comparison and scale, and carries no explanation on its own.Open glossary term cannot provide.
They are most useful when:
User interviews are often used alongside usability testing and analytics to build a complete picture.
Key takeaway
Interviews are most useful when the problem needs depth, context, and explanation rather than quick validation.
How to run it
Set up properly
Be clear on three things before you start: what you are trying to learn, what decision the serviceUser ResearchUnderstand user behaviour, validate ideas, and make clearer product decisions with evidence you can act on.Open service will inform, and who you need to speak to. A study with no decision attached tends to produce findings that are interesting and unused.
Recruit people with real experience of the problem. Whoever is easiest to reach is usually whoever is closest to you, and they are the least likely to surprise you.
Run the method
A good interview feels like a conversation, not a script. You are trying to get someone to tell you what actually happened, in their own words, before you offer any of yours.
- Start broad, then narrow. Open with how they do the thing at all, before you ask about your part in it. Leading with your product frames everything that follows.
- Ask about real experiences, not opinions. "Tell me about the last time" gets you an event. "What do you think of" gets you a review.
- Ask open questions. Anything answerable yes or no ends a thread you wanted to pull. Swap "was that difficult?" for "what happened next?".
- Let people talk, including through the pauses. The considered answer usually arrives two or three seconds after you wanted to fill the silence.
- Ask for examples until it is concrete. "It is slow" is an opinion. "I waited, refreshed twice, then gave up and phoned" is something you can design against.
Good questions: Tell me about the last time you did this. What happened next. Why did you choose that.
Avoid: Would you use this. Do you like this idea. Both invite a hypothetical, and hypotheticals are the least reliable thing anyone will tell you.
Capture and make sense of it
The value comes after the interview. A single glossarySessionA session is a single period of user interaction with a product, from entry to exit within a defined timeframe.Open glossary term is a story; the glossaryPatternA pattern is a reusable solution to a design problem that recurs across products and contexts. It captures an approach already shown to work, so a team solves the problem once rather than every time it appears.Open glossary term only appears across sessions. Look for:
- Repeated glossaryPatternA pattern is a reusable solution to a design problem that recurs across products and contexts. It captures an approach already shown to work, so a team solves the problem once rather than every time it appears.Open glossary term, especially ones you were not looking for
- Common glossaryPain PointA specific problem or frustration users experience when trying to complete a task.Open glossary term, and whether people worked around them or gave up
- Shared glossaryBehaviourBehaviour refers to how users interact with a system, including actions, patterns, and responses.Open glossary term that cut across different types of user
- Differences that suggest you are designing for more than one audience
Group glossaryInsightAn insight is a meaningful understanding that explains why something is happening and what it means.Open glossary term so they become usable, not just interesting. If the output cannot change a decision, it will not survive the next planning meeting.
What to look for
Focus on:
Where it goes wrong
Most issues come from:
If you leave with your assumptions confirmed, you probably did not go deep enough.
What you get from it
Done properly, this method gives you:
Key takeaway
It turns assumptions into something you can actually act on.
Get in touch
If this sounds like something you need, we can help you understand what your users are actually doing and why.
No guesswork. No assumptions. Just clear insight you can act on.
FAQ
Common questions
A few practical answers to the questions that usually come up around this method.
What are user interviews in UX?
User interviews are a qualitative research method used to understand user behaviour, needs and motivations through direct conversation.
When should you use user interviews?
Use them when you need depth and explanation, especially in early discovery or when analytics alone cannot explain behaviour.
How many users do you need for interviews?
Usually 5 to 8 relevant participants per group is enough to uncover strong behavioural patterns, depending on the complexity of the problem.
What is the difference between interviews and surveys?
User interviews provide depth and context. Surveys provide scale and measurable patterns.
Are user interviews the same as usability testing?
No. User interviews focus on understanding behaviour and experiences, while usability testing focuses on how well someone can use a product.
Quick take
If you need to understand why something is happening, not just what is happening, start with interviews.
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