Don't ask what the user wants! Three basic questions about user interviews, to the product manager

User Research is the first step in the design process of the user center. It is an ideal way to understand users and match their goals and needs with your business purposes. However, communication with users usually requires skill. If Joe asks the user directly what you want and uses the iPhone as needed, who knows how to make the magic horse. So, let's take a look at this article translated by shangshang of Baidu UEO. Whether you are using research or design, you should be able to get a lot of inspiration.

The primary principle of user research: do not directly ask users what they want

-- Erika Hall, just enough research

I like user interviews. They are inexpensive and effective (you get more information than you ask), and fast (generally, it is enough to interview five users ). However, excellent user interviews require skills. If you are naturally sensitive and curious about the crowd, it can help you get the information you want. If you don't have this trait, it can also help you bring your roles into the experience. For example, Google's Michael Margolis prefers to bring himself into the role for user research.

As stated by Erika Hall, when you do user interviews, you should avoid asking what they want, because this can only bring you wrong ideas. You can only find the solution that the user imagined to solve the problem, but cannot find the root cause of the problem.

Do not set barriers for your user interviews

Asking users what they want makes the interview more difficult. At the same time, you can only get the wrong opinion.

When you ask the user what they want, you actually ask him to think about all the possibilities for solving the problem, which will undoubtedly make user research more difficult. If you are doing user research to build new products or functions that do not exist yet, you are actually wondering why the user cannot complete the task using the existing tools. Follow this method, you can design new features or incrementally optimize existing features to help them complete their tasks.

When I worked at kissmetrics, I spent a lot of time communicating with users about the tools or methods they used to solve the current problems. I have summarized three efficient and useful questions for user interviews, and I have tried and tested the following:

What problems are you solving? (Collect content information)

How do you solve this problem? (Analyze workflow)

Is there any way to help you do better (Discover Opportunities)

Note: kissmetrics data analysis company is located in San Francisco

Question 1: What problems are you trying to solve? Why?

In order to explore the root causes of product usage and problems, we constantly ask users why they want to do so until we truly understand the pain points of users or customers.

When you investigate what users are doing, it is critical to collect background information, which helps you understand your users. The survey collects information such as the number of users working in the group and how they work in a large organization, which will help us set the scope framework of the problem we are investigating, in order to make our products more effective under this framework

Imagine that you are a craftsman. Don't you want to know whether your current task is to fix a crack on the wall or repair the whole house? Depending on your task, you need to select different tools and Corresponding models.

This applies to user interviews. When you know what problems the user is solving and inform your research team of the necessary information, your PM and RD teams will be grateful to you. Explore the root cause of the problem and ask why. Using the five-step "why" question can simplify the investigation. By repeatedly asking why (not really asking only five reasons, depending on the situation), you will naturally know how the user's workflow is, or find out which processes are necessary. Using this method, I can improve the process to meet user needs without requiring engineers to develop a new function to make up for it, so that they can be rescued from inefficient projects.

Question 2: How do you solve this problem currently?

Figuring out the workflow and organizational structure helps us determine where to start solving the problem.

After clarifying the scope of the problem, I tend to find out how users are dealing with the problem. The advantage of doing so is that I can follow their steps to understand how painful they are to deal with the problem. Sometimes, users can solve problems in an amazing way to get what they want. However, we only need to slightly improve the product to solve the problem that users spend hours or even a week solving.

For example. Recently, I researched the new features they are planning to develop for a product team. However, we want to know how serious the problem is, so as to rank its priority. Through interviews with a series of users on how they operate, I have come to the following conclusions:

Note: This process expresses how the customer manages the mail list and evaluates the customer source. CTA stands for Commodity Trading Advisors, that is, commodity trading consultant. webinar is an online conference software.

Knowing the user's workflow can also help your team find out which part of your workflow needs optimization. For another example, in kissmetrics, we recently found that customers prefer to use emails instead of third-party applications when checking data. We already know that kissmetrics is an indispensable part of their daily work. Some users may even process this type of data as soon as they arrive at the office, so we are currently upgrading this project, that is, a clearer data summary is sent to our customers' emails every day.

Question 3: How can I help you do better?

Most of the research is over before you think about it. The problem is to ask users to give you some tips: in which fields do they need help most. Of course, this issue can also help you confirm or overturn certain assumptions about your team's product architecture.

If you have crossed the previous questions from the beginning and asked users how they can do better, you can only get some of their opinions, but you cannot know how they are dealing with the current problems.

"Designing a product is very difficult. In many cases, people only know what they want after the product is available ." -Steve Jobs

This is an opportunity for you to discover how to optimize products, or opportunities for users to vent their current solutions, or problems that have been ignored. Either you will find that this opportunity point is strong enough to push the entire team to solve the problem, or this opportunity point has actually been solved, and we need to pick it up and follow another assumption.

Note: readers may question: "What method can help you do better?" is another question of "What Do You Need, in terms of user research, users are more inclined to describe the pain points for users when a problem occurs at work, rather than asking users about any design issues, design issues need to be determined by professionals. The "what methods can help you do better" provided by the author is an extension of the first two problems and an investigation of the current solutions of users, it helps researchers better understand the user's situation and give them some inspiration. Therefore, it is not in a strict sense that the user decides to influence the product, but rather information collection and reference.

In the user survey, using these three basic questions, I can verify assumptions very efficiently for my team, so that we can provide users with long-term value, not just to patch the product.

When you interview users, what questions do you like to ask to help you build or optimize products? I do not like to talk too much, but to be a loyal audience of users.