What do you do if your user interviews are not yielding valuable insights?

If user interviews are not yielding valuable insights, it's essential to reassess and adjust your approach to ensure more meaningful outcomes. Here's what you can do: Review Interview Methodology: Evaluate your interview methodology to ensure it aligns with research objectives and user needs. Consider factors such as interview questions, structure, and participant selection criteria. Adjust your approach as needed to facilitate more open and insightful conversations. Refine Interview Questions: Review the questions asked during interviews to ensure they are clear, open-ended, and focused on uncovering relevant insights.

1. Introduce projective techniques such as card sorting or scenarios to elicit deeper responses. 2. Incorporate silence strategically after asking a question to give participants more time to think and respond.

En mi experiencia puede ayudar la segmentación de preguntas: Similar a la segmentación de clientes en tus proyectos, considera segmentar tus preguntas basadas en los perfiles de los usuarios. Esto puede ayudarte a identificar cómo las necesidades y experiencias varían entre diferentes grupos, lo cual es crucial para personalizar y mejorar la UX

Spotify actively engages with its user base through varied research methodologies to continually enhance user experience, incorporating feedback into iterative design processes. Airbnb's innovative use of storytelling in user research uncovers deep, qualitative insights that guide product development, showcasing the value of diverse user engagement strategies.

From my experience, when user interviews falter, the traditional approach of merely adjusting questions or participants isn't always sufficient. Instead, I propose integrating participatory design sessions into the research phase. This method involves users directly in the design process, facilitating a co-creation environment where insights and solutions emerge organically from active engagement with the product. This approach not only yields deeper insights but also increases user investment and satisfaction, as they see their contributions directly influence the outcome.

Looking at both what people say and how they react to questions, tasks or materials in front of them will help develop an understanding of their mental model, high points and pain points. This helps uncover reactions such as frustrations when encountering difficulty in completing a task, confusion regarding instructions, surprise when a feature doesn’t fit into their existing mental model, and moments of delight when a part of their design addresses an existing pain point. When setting up an interview observation template, you can create a space for additional notes which can be used to note down any changes to non-verbal cues. Noting what they are reacting to, and user quotes from that portion of the interview will help provide context.

In my current job, I run my interviews during the tech conferences we are running. Users are deeply engaged with our app and it is easier to collect precise information but some time I stop to follow my interviews scenario and bounce on users’ answers to collect as much data on the topic that feels right to them.

Before starting over, take a bit of a break from the project. After that, go back to the raw data, and analyze differently, include new people, use other methods. Raw data is incredibly valuable, and seeing it with new eyes could help into generating conclusions. You don't need to answer only your research questions, dare to generate new insights that might provide value.