How to choose interviewees

Why is it important to analyze users?

User research is important because it helps to study people’s behavior, needs, and motivations. UX designers are often responsible for a clear interface. But product managers and marketers also need to study user habits and help designers to improve the interface....

A common mistake when analyzing users

In the past, when we made some changes to products, we often relied on our own subjective opinions of what would be better for the users. However, product usage scenarios among company employees can be very different from the usage scenarios of real users. When you work with a product for a long time and know all its options and capabilities perfectly, you look at the interface, usability, etc., differently. Therefore, firstly, it is necessary to study the pain points of customers and ask them about possible changes in the product....

How to choose interviewees

At the beginning of the product analysis of Nektony apps, I showed the products to everyone I knew, friends and colleagues from other companies, and asked them what they thought about the apps. But, as I noted above, this is not the right approach. Later, we started working only with real users who once contacted our technical support service....

Stage 1: Gathering contacts to whom we will write about the interview

We sell our apps through the App Store and our website worldwide. However, I did not select respondents by country. The main criterion for collecting respondents is the level of their loyalty to the company, which characterizes the level of their willingness to agree to an interview. In our case, the support service always adds the client’s loyalty tag after communicating with him when solving issues. So, downloading a list of such contacts was not a problem....

Stage 2: Sending letters and preparing for the interview

I prepared a letter asking you to agree to an interview and help us make our product better. I sent these letters individually, not through a mailing service, because personalization is important. In general, I experimented with the content of the letter and changed it depending on the history of interaction with the person, as well as on the results of responses to my previous letters to other people....

Stage 3: The interview

So, we came directly to the interview itself. The main goal and all our questions to respondents consist of understanding the following:...

Stage 4: First prototypes and repeat interviews

It is important that after analyzing the necessary changes in the programs, prototypes should be made and re-shown to users. As I said above, sometimes you may encounter unreasonable user expectations. Here are my next steps before finalizing product changes:...

Examples of changes based on interview results

Now, using examples of the interface of some of our programs, I want to show what changes have occurred in them thanks to the analysis of user needs through interviews. It is important that this is not only about UX design but also about rethinking some options and the need to show them to users....

Final recommendations

I recommend transcribing each individual interview and then using the Value Proposition Canvas to identify user values and needs (this topic needs a separate article; you can google it and find a lot of information about it)....