User Interviews

Written by

Angela Guedes

Customer Success

Design

Product Management

Overview

Are you struggling to get actionable insights from your user interviews? Fear not! We’re here to guide you through the process and help you get the most out of your interviews. In this article, we will discuss how to conduct user interviews that get you actionable insights. We will cover three key areas: how to run a live interview, how to leverage technology to improve the interview process, and how to effectively share insights with other teams. So let's dive in!

Setting Goals and Finding the Right Participants

Before you start your user interview, you need to prepare thoroughly. First, you need to define the goals of the interview. What do you want to learn from your users? What are your research questions? You need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve.

Next, you need to recruit the right participants. You should look for people who match your target audience. For example, when we started exploring the meeting recording use case for Claap, we interviewed our own users. However, only those that were already recording long claap videos. We also reached out to our network to understand their meeting recording needs.

Once you have recruited your participants, you should provide them with a brief overview of what the interview will be about and what you hope to achieve.

Running the Live Interview

Now that you've done your preparation, it's time to run the live interview. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your user interview:

Start with some warm-up questions to help the participants feel comfortable. Ask them about their background, interests, and hobbies.
Ask open-ended questions that encourage the participant to talk about their experiences and opinions. Avoid leading questions that might bias their answers.
Listen actively to what the participant is saying. Don't interrupt or finish their sentences. Instead, let them talk and ask follow-up questions to clarify what they mean.
Pay attention to non-verbal cues such as body language and facial expressions. These can often reveal more than what the participant is saying.
End the interview with a debriefing session where you ask the participant for feedback on the interview. This can help you improve your interviewing skills and make the participant feel valued.

Tips for Effective User Interviews

Now that we've covered how to run a live user interview, let's talk about why it's important to record the interview:

You can focus on actively listening to the user during the user interview, rather than taking detailed notes.
You can revisit the interview later on and catch any insights that you may have missed.
You can also share the user interview with other team members who may not have been present.

Here’s how Claap can help:

Google Meet: record your meetings directly from Google Meet. Pin key moments while recording and easily access your recording right after meeting is over. You’ll get access to your call transcript and AI-generated notes. You can also invite team members to view your recordings and collaborate on analyses and insights.
Zoom: Quickly import your Zoom recordings to Claap to access our powerful collaboration features: transcript, summary and video annotation.
Other platforms: if your meetings take place in other platforms, you have two options to bring them to Claap: use our video upload feature or record them with Claap (Chrome extension or Mac desktop app)

Turning User Interviews into Actionable Insights

Finally, it's time to share your insights with other teams. Here are some tips to help you effectively communicate your findings:

Create a short summary of your interviews with key highlights from the interview.
Make it accessible so everyone can jump in. Here the idea is not necessarily to run into conclusions but it’s important than everyone has a taste of what your users are saying.
Share analysis using the different recordings: that’s the value of having a system of record to find them back easily. You can use quotes to highlight your learnings. The idea is to take a step back on your user research to define next steps.

Conclusion

In conclusion, conducting user interviews can be a valuable tool for product managers. To get the most out of your interviews, it's important to prepare thoroughly, run the live interview effectively, record the interview and leverage tools that offer transcripts, video annotation, and AI-powered notes, and share the insights with other teams regularly. By following these steps, you can get actionable insights that can help you create products that meet the needs of your users. Good luck!