User Interview Template

About the User Interview Template

The user interview template is where you can keep track of your user interviews, adding the questions, answers, and any other information you might find helpful to build a profile of your user and conduct user research.

What is a user interview?

User interviews are a UX research technique where researchers ask users questions about a topic. You can use the user interview template to prepare your questions and take note of the interviewee’s responses. It allows your team to quickly and easily collect user data, and it’s also a great way to learn more about who uses your product.

When to conduct user interviews

Product teams, UX designers and writers gather background data to understand how people use technology. It’s a way to take a snapshot of how users interact with a product, understand user objectives and motivations, and find users’ pain points.

It’s an important step when developing or iterating an existing service or product. That’s why marketing, business, and development teams often find it helpful to conduct a user interview to gain insights and develop better strategies and solutions.

Benefits of conducting user interviews

There are many advantages to conducting user interviews, especially if you are developing a product or improving a service. It allows researchers to understand the user experience, gives a clear picture of a product’s usability, and enables companies to gather demographic or ethnographic data that can be used to create user personas.

Who should implement the user interview template

Two UX researchers, product managers, or other product team members generally conduct user interviews. That doesn't mean that other people can’t join the process; marketing researchers and strategists may also take part in the interview as listeners and take notes to develop a user persona.

How to structure your user interview

Start explaining the purpose of the interview. Tell the interviewee what you plan to cover and what you’re trying to accomplish in the interview. Then explain how user data will be used afterward.

Afterward, start your interview. Make sure you’re not priming the interviewee at any point during the conversation. For example, if you’re trying to figure out how people are using your podcast app, ask them, “Do you use any podcast apps?” rather than “How often are you using our podcast app?”

A good practice is to create space for answers to flourish, and by that, we mean asking open-ended questions so they can elaborate on their answers. Another tip is to try keeping the interview short, under an hour.

At the end of the interview, thank the user for coming and give them the opportunity to ask any questions of their own.

Common user interview questions

1. Tell me about your background.

2. How often do you use [similar products in our space]?

3. When you are using these products, do you encounter any challenges?

4. What are the most important tasks you perform while using these products?

5. Is there anything you wish you could do with these products which is currently not possible?

6. Are there any ways these products do not support your current needs?

Set up your own user interview template

The user interview template is designed to capture the most relevant information from your user interviews. In addition to the details of the interview and interviewee, you may want to include questions asked and topics covered, as well as user observations and feedback and key takeaways or action points for your team.

The user interview template can also be referred to later and used as a strategic tool to develop a complete customer journey map. Share your user interview template with your team and stakeholders and ask for feedback or brainstorm based on your findings to gain insights.