User Interview Guide
By Nurul Rahman · Published · Updated
Builds a 30-minute user interview guide with a warm-up, open questions on past behaviour, follow-up probes and the habits that spoil the answers.
Prompt template
## User Interview Guide
Create a 30-minute interview guide.
- Research goal: [textarea: What decision this research should inform]
- Who you are interviewing: [text: Freelance designers who invoice clients]
- What you already know: [textarea: Existing assumptions or data]
- Product stage: [dropdown: Idea, Prototype, Live product, Mature product]
- Topics to cover: [textarea: Three to five areas]
- Interview format: [dropdown: Video call, In person, Phone]
Frame the guide around past behaviour rather than opinions about the future, because people predict poorly and remember what they did. Structure the 30 minutes with timings: a 3-minute welcome covering recording consent and that there are no wrong answers; a 5-minute warm-up on role and context; about 15 minutes on the main topics, each with one open opening question ("Tell me about the last time you ...") and two or three probes ("What happened next?", "Why was that hard?", "What did you do instead?"); a 5-minute wrap-up asking what we missed; and a thank you. Order topics from broad to specific. Write questions that are open, neutral and one at a time. List what to avoid: leading questions, pitching the product, asking people what they would pay for, hypotheticals and filling silences. Add a short note-taking template with a column for quotes and one for observations, and a line on how to turn the notes into insights afterwards.