471: How product managers best interview users – with Steve Portigal

Mastering the art of customer conversations – for product managers As a product person, you know or at least have heard how important it is to talk with customers. Also, if you are not a complete newb, you also know you can’t simply ask the customer what they want. Instead, what do you ask them—how do you conduct a customer interview? We are about to find out from the go-to person on customer interviews, Steve Portigal. Rich Mironov, past guest and CPO of CPOs, said that Steve is the go-to veteran for field research and interviewing users. Steve is an experienced user researcher and consultant who helps organizations to build more mature user research practices. He’s also the host of the Dollars to Donuts podcast, where he interviews people who lead user research in their organizations. His work has informed the development of professional audio gear, wine packaging, medical information systems, design systems, video-conferencing technology, and music streaming services. You may already be familiar with Steve’s highly regarded book Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights. He has recently updated this book, creating the second edition. Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:52] Why did your book, Interviewing Users, need a second edition? It’s been 10 years since the first edition was published. The fields that we all work in have changed. There was a little bit of discussion 10 years ago about remote user research, and now remote research is much more common. I wanted to talk in-depth about the best practices for remote research, even as they’re still emerging. Research operations, which is a field adjacent to user research, has emerged. The book also draws from 10 more years of me doing research and teaching research. I’m always learning. I updated the stories and included better examples. [6:09] How do we ask customers the right questions? First, don’t assume you know what people want. Second, recognize that just asking customers what they want is not effective. There are a few related questions that you should answer. * Business challenge: What do we want to do? What do we want to change? What’s coming up? Why are we doing this research? * Research question: What do we want to learn from people? * Interview questions: The questions you ask customers. What you want to learn is not the same as what you should ask. For example, if you want to understand where people find the most value in their budgetary spending, don’t ask, “Where do you find the most value in your budgetary spending?” Instead, craft a set of questions and build a discussion guide that has a flow and sets context. Ask questions like: * What do you do? * How do you do it? * How long have you been doing it? * What are you big problems? * Where does budgeting fit into those larger problems? Use the interview to ask many questions to get a larger context so you can conclude what the answers to your research questions are. [10:19] How should we prepare for a customer interview? Once you understand your business question and research question, think about your sample. Who are you going to talk to? Be creative in your sample. Don’t talk to the same people over and over again. Be intentional about who is going to give you the most information. Talk to people who will give deeper insight about the situation so you can make decisions about the changes you want to make. Figure out who will give you answers to your research question. Next, figure out how to get to those people. Then figure out what you’re going to ask them. Write a discussion guide. No interview looks like the guide you write, but it is a great tool to share with stakeholders to respond to their questions.