Need user insights? Get the Playbook 📕
Welcome—to user interview script writing 101 📝. We're opening our doors to the art and science of crafting great user interview questions. Turns out, it's best to already have them written, and you're welcome to borrow from the resource below.
Yay! Pre-written user interview questions so you can grab-n-go.
Work smarter, not harder.
The Turbo UXR Playbook is your tactical reference 👇 guide — free to download!
Get the Playbook
Learn More
Until this point, you've made sense out of the project parameters when deciding how to craft a UXR project brief. Now, you're amidst the execution stage of UX research. And you need an interview script (AKA protocol, guide, outline). These interview questions will be used to generate raw feedback, which you'll leverage when determining how to analyze user data for insights. Those insights are the gasoline that then fuels the process of synthesizing insights into themes. Out of which comes UX recommendations, and ultimately a UX improvement action plan.
In this article, we strive to make script writing for user interviews a turnkey solution. The trick is to leverage standard frameworks for the general flow of the conversation, while pulling from pre-written, tried-and-true question sets for additional efficiency and speed. Read on to learn what user research tasks are, how moderated (and unmoderated) conversations typically go, 25+ great user interview question sets, and more about the standardization process of user interviewing.
Let's go! Ready-made user tasks to operate 🔥 UXR at the speed of business.
interview guide user interviewing task writing interviewing 101 how-to interview research guides user tasks usertesting protocol question guide
User tasks are your talking points, key questions, transitions, and more in the heat of research. When successful, they prime the user to share challenges, opportunities, and recommendations to improve the UX.
In their most basic form, user research tasks contain the specific phrasing for how the UX researcher elicits user feedback. They're the detailed questions to be asked in the live research situation. Research tasks are the most important of several core components of the user interview protocol.
Without research tasks, your protocol won't have the specificity required to draw out quality user feedback. Good user feedback comes from asking the right questions. These sets of questions need to be thought through thoroughly 🤪 in advance to ensure all main points are covered. Furthermore, it's very difficult to memorize them all for interviewing later, so the process of writing, editing, and refining can be a crucial step to generate user feedback in a systematic manner.
Work smarter, not harder.
The Turbo UXR Playbook is your tactical reference 👇 guide — free to download!
Get the Playbook
Learn More
The typical flow of a user interview leverages 6 steps. These steps guide the user through a journey of reflection and sharing in an engaging manner, meant to extract maximum value from each participant.
The flow of user tasks is important to the outcome of the process. Similar to a movie plot line or a song melody, there exists a general pattern to extract a range of emotions. And since UXR is intent on surfacing users’ feelings, thoughts, and perceptions, borrowing from these patterns is useful.
The pattern we’ve found that works best in user interviews is a 6-step approach. Several user tasks exist within each step along the arc. We break down this arc in full detail within our article, 6-Step Guide to Drafting UX Research Tasks ✏️. In a nutshell, the flow goes something like: start high-level, narrow in, back up, drill down, zoom out, reflect, and summarize.
In the following section, we leverage these 6-steps to outline 25 go-to user tasks and questions within.
Instead of a mere 25 individual/specific questions, we’ve actually built out 25 user tasks, each containing 3–4 questions (totaling ~100 questions examples!). The multiple, related questions within each task allow for brief exploration of the topic from multiple angles. We call this a question set.
Question sets are important because users don’t always register a single, stand-alone question correctly.
Having a short intro statement, followed by 3 associated questions allows users to better understand the gist for what the UXRr is probing after, and to answer accordingly. Utilizing our 6-step UXR interview guide, we’ve laid out respective user tasks, for each step below:
The high-level overview step is meant to build rapport, establish a foundation, and set the tone for the interview. This is your chance get a sense of the user broadly, and from where they’re coming. All the while, setting the stage for where the interview is going. Here’s a few examples from which to draw:
The context-setting step is meant to put the user into the right state of mind for the remaining tasks of the study. Now, the user gets a general sense of what/where you're looking for feedback. If done well, it will focus their attention, create necessary guardrails, and give them necessary context. Here’s a few examples from which to draw:
The prototype step is meant to put a visual/idea in front of the user to solicit directed reaction(s). We've found greater value when the interviewer shares an artifact of some sort (i.e. boundary object) to give the user something with which to engage. The user can see, touch, hold, and respond more clearly when the we literally bring something to the table. Here’s a few examples from which to draw:
The focused deep-dive step is meant to get into the heart of the matter. It's the central focus to which everything has built up. It'll most often contain elements of your core research questions. You understand the user, they understand you, and everyone has a shared understanding... now it's time to uncover the truth (pains, gains, and everywhere in between). Here’s a few examples from which to draw:
The reflection step is meant to surface the bigger picture. This phase will tie a bow on the concepts being explored. It will help the user stand back and reflect, and the interviewer to receive valuable feedback about the full interview arc. Here’s a few examples from which to draw:
The summary step is meant to re-surface the most important parts of the interview. It purposefully re-plays key elements that were most insightful. This gives the user one last chance to dig deeper, and the interview a moment to solidify what they've heard. Here’s a few examples from which to draw:
Repositories of standard questions (and question sets) are valuable to the UXR process because they speed up protocol writing and establish a consistent style for users to easily understand. Both of these help to generate more useful data.
As you do more and more user studies, speed and consistency become important 📚. It helps you get to insights faster, and focus on the making meaning, not protocols. Whether you use our approach, or something similar, we recommend establishing a pattern to craft user interview questions. This has worked for us. We may evolve this over time, as we hope you do as well.
Writing great interview questions exists in the 'Execution' phase of 5-phases of UXR. The question sets are an essential part of your key deliverable, a research procotocol. And they are used to generate your raw data, which is the critical output of this phase.
Before you've written your interview questions, the research is just an idea. Crafting the specific questions brings that idea to life. Then, all you have to do is get in front of users (i.e. moderated or unmoderated) and present the questions. From which the data is generated, insights can be collected, and themes synthesized.
Having great research questions sets everything up for success. Whether you run the interviews, someone else does, or you have a computer (e.g. unmoderated) do it for you, great research questions are your currency 💸.
Check out our backlog of UX research templates to help with planning. Protocols, plans, outlines, and more to help guide your overall UXR process. We use these ourselves, and make them available to all, because we love this stuff! We want to help make more, successful user research in the world. Doing so culminates in greater job satisfaction, better end-user experience(s), and a stronger economy for all 😊.
Back to top ⤴
Work smarter, not harder.
The Turbo UXR Playbook is your tactical reference 👇 guide — free to download!
Get the Playbook
Learn More
