Interviewing Users (1st Edition)
How to Uncover Compelling Insights
Second edition now on preorder!
Interviewing is a foundational user research tool that people assume they already possess. Everyone can ask questions, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Interviewing Users provides invaluable interviewing techniques and tools that enable you to conduct informative interviews with anyone. You’ll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people.
Second edition now on preorder!
Interviewing is a foundational user research tool that people assume they already possess. Everyone can ask questions, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Interviewing Users provides invaluable interviewing techniques and tools that enable you to conduct informative interviews with anyone. You’ll move from simply gathering data to uncovering powerful insights about people.
Testimonials
Interviewing is central to much design research. Good interview-based projects can be hard to pull off. Steve Portigal’s book is packed with useful tips, illustrative examples, cautionary tales, and how-to advice for planning and conducting interviews, as well as analyzing and presenting data gathered. Grounded in real research examples, this book is a must-read for both novice and experienced interviewers.
Elizabeth F. Churchill, Director of Human Computer Interaction, eBay Research Labs
A great how-to handbook for anyone engaged in user interviews, conducted in a design context. The book is packed with ideas, guidelines, and tricks on how to surface relevant insights for new products and services. This book is a fantastic compilation of insights and methodological tricks!
Nicolas Nova, Principal, The Near Future Laboratory
Steve’s book is based on his extensive expertise with qualitative ethnography, and is a must-read for students of design research.
Jon Kolko VP, Design, MyEdu & Director, Austin Center for Design
Steve Portigal’s fast-paced, ultra-readable primer provides a common-sense approach to interviewing users that’s as inspiring as it is instructive.
Allan Chochinov Editor in Chief, Core77
Portigal’s common-sense guide to interviewing is an excellent primer on methods and techniques. The sidebars, case studies, photos, and illustrations bring the information to life.
Brenda Laurel, PhD, designer, researcher
Steve knocks one out of the ballpark with the detail and insights he’s captured in this fabulous book. This is one of those books you’ll go back to, again and again.
Jared Spool, Principal at User Interface Engineering
Table of Contents
Foreword by Grant McCracken
Chapter 1: The Importance of Interviewing in Design
Chapter 2: A Framework for Interviewing
Chapter 3: Getting Ready to Conduct Your Interviews
Chapter 4: More Than Just Asking Questions
Chapter 5: Key Stages of the Interview
Chapter 6: How to Ask Questions
Chapter 7: Documenting the Interview
Chapter 8: Optimizing the Interview
Chapter 9: Making an Impact with Your Research
FAQ
These common questions about interviewing users and their short answers are taken from Steve Portigal’s book Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.
- Why is this even a book? Isn’t this really just talking to people? I already know how to do that!
To learn something new requires interviewing, not just chatting. Poor interviews produce inaccurate information that can take your business in the wrong direction. Interviewing is a skill that at times can be fundamentally different than what you do normally in conversation. Great interviewers leverage their natural style of interacting with people but make deliberate, specific choices about what to say, when to say it, how to say it, and when to say nothing. Doing this well is hard and takes years of practice.
Chapter 6 is devoted entirely to techniques for asking questions.
Resources
Presentations
- Interviewing Users (O’Reilly 2013) (webinar recording)
- Interviewing Users (IxDA Los Angeles/LA UX Meetup 2013) (slides, video, alternate video, tweetstream)
- We’ve Done All This Research, Now What (Mozilla UX 2012) (video)
- Discover and Act on Insights about People (Lift 2011) (slides and video)
- Culture, User Research & Design (Unfinished Business 2011) (slides and audio)
- Best Practices for Interviewing Users (SXSW 2011) (slides and audio)
- Skill Building for Design Innovators (CHIFOO 2010) – (slides and audio)
- Ethnography as a Cultural Practice (PARC Forum 2010) (video)
- Design and Research: Ships in the Night? (User Research Friday 2008) (slides; video)
- Cross-Cultural Research (UX Week 2006) – (slides here, audio here)
