{"id":"a89524e9-c1f9-48de-aed6-d47b8fdda831","shortId":"SG5Uqd","kind":"skill","title":"conducting-user-interviews","tagline":"Plan, conduct, and synthesize user/customer interviews. See also: conducting-interviews (hiring), designing-surveys (quantitative).","description":"# Conducting User Interviews\n\n## Scope\n\n**Covers**\n- Planning an interview study that supports a specific product decision\n- Recruiting the right participants (including early adopters when appropriate)\n- Running interviews that capture **specific stories and behaviors** (not opinions)\n- Synthesizing interviews into **actionable** insights, opportunities, and next steps\n- Creating a lightweight “customer panel” habit for fast follow-ups\n\n**When to use**\n- “Create a discussion guide for discovery interviews.”\n- “Recruit and run 8 user interviews about onboarding / activation.”\n- “We need to understand why users switched (or churned) — run switch interviews.”\n- “Help me synthesize interviews into insights + opportunities.”\n- “I’m a PM and need to run customer conversations next week.”\n\n**When NOT to use**\n- You primarily need **quantitative** evidence or statistical confidence (use `designing-surveys` for surveys or an experiment/analytics workflow)\n- You’re doing **usability testing** with task-based evaluation as the main output (use `usability-testing` — different protocol, different deliverables)\n- You’re running **hiring/candidate interviews** (use `conducting-interviews` — different goals, rubrics, and legal considerations)\n- You already have feedback data and need to **synthesize existing evidence** (use `analyzing-user-feedback`); this skill is for collecting *new* first-person stories\n- You’re working with **high-risk populations or sensitive topics** (medical, legal, minors) without appropriate approvals/training\n- You have no decision to support (you’ll produce anecdotes without impact)\n\n## Inputs\n\n**Minimum required**\n- Product + target user/customer segment (who, context of use)\n- The decision the interviews should inform (e.g., positioning, onboarding redesign, roadmap bet)\n- Interview type: discovery / JTBD switch / churn / concept test (or “recommend”)\n- Target participants (role, behaviors, situation, recency) + “who NOT to interview”\n- Constraints: number of interviews, time box, language/region, recording allowed, incentives (if any)\n\n**Missing-info strategy**\n- Ask up to 5 questions from [references/INTAKE.md](references/INTAKE.md).\n- If answers aren’t available, proceed with explicit assumptions and label unknowns.\n\n## Outputs (deliverables)\n\nProduce a **User Interview Pack** in Markdown (in-chat; or as files if requested):\n\n1) **Context snapshot** (goal, decision, hypotheses, constraints)\n2) **Recruiting plan** (channels, outreach copy, scheduling logistics) + **screener**\n3) **Interview guide** (script + question bank + probes) + **consent/recording plan**\n4) **Note-taking template** + **tagging scheme**\n5) **Synthesis report** (themes, evidence, opportunities, recommendations, confidence)\n6) **Follow-up plan** (thank-you, keep-in-touch, “customer panel” list/cadence)\n7) **Risks / Open questions / Next steps** (always included)\n\nTemplates: [references/TEMPLATES.md](references/TEMPLATES.md)\n\n## Workflow (8 steps)\n\n### 1) Frame the decision and choose interview type\n- **Inputs:** Context + [references/INTAKE.md](references/INTAKE.md).\n- **Actions:** Define the decision, what you need to learn (unknowns), and pick the interview type (discovery vs switch vs churn vs concept).\n- **Outputs:** Context snapshot + study intent.\n- **Checks:** You can answer: “What will we do differently after these interviews?”\n\n### 2) Define participant criteria (who/when/why) and sampling plan\n- **Inputs:** Target segment, product context, constraints.\n- **Actions:** Specify inclusion/exclusion criteria; prioritize **recency** (recent switch/churn/attempt) when relevant; decide sample mix (e.g., 6 core + 2 edge cases).\n- **Outputs:** Participant profile + sampling plan.\n- **Checks:** Criteria are behavior/situation-based (not demographic proxies).\n\n### 3) Create recruiting plan + screener + outreach copy\n- **Inputs:** Participant profile; available channels (CRM, support, community, ads, LinkedIn).\n- **Actions:** Draft outreach messages, a screener, and scheduling logistics. Expect high drop-off; plan volume accordingly.\n- **Outputs:** Recruiting plan + screener + outreach copy.\n- **Checks:** Screener screens for the *story* you need (recency, context, alternatives), not “interest in our product.”\n\n### 4) Draft the interview guide (story-first)\n- **Inputs:** Interview type + hypotheses/unknowns.\n- **Actions:** Build a guide that elicits **specific stories** (“last time…”) and avoids leading questions. Include probes, pivots, and time boxes. Add consent/recording script.\n- **Outputs:** Interview guide + consent/recording plan.\n- **Checks:** At least 70% of questions ask about past behavior and concrete examples.\n\n### 5) Run interviews + capture clean notes (PM/Design present)\n- **Inputs:** Guide, logistics, notes template.\n- **Actions:** Run the session, follow the story, and capture verbatims. If possible, have PM + design observe live (or listen to recordings) to avoid secondhand dilution.\n- **Outputs:** Completed notes per interview + key quotes + immediate highlights.\n- **Checks:** Each interview yields 2–5 “story moments” (trigger → struggle → workaround → outcome).\n\n### 6) Debrief immediately and normalize evidence\n- **Inputs:** Interview notes, recordings/transcripts (if any).\n- **Actions:** Do a 10–15 min debrief right after each interview: surprises, hypotheses updates, follow-ups. Tag notes consistently.\n- **Outputs:** Debrief bullets + tagged notes.\n- **Checks:** Unclear claims are marked as “needs follow-up” instead of treated as facts.\n\n### 7) Synthesize across interviews into themes and opportunities\n- **Inputs:** Tagged notes across interviews.\n- **Actions:** Cluster by outcomes/struggles; capture contradictions; quantify lightly (counts) without over-claiming. Translate insights into opportunities and recommendations with confidence levels.\n- **Outputs:** Synthesis report + opportunity list.\n- **Checks:** Every major insight has at least 2 supporting interviews (or is labeled “single anecdote”).\n\n### 8) Share, decide, follow up, and run the quality gate\n- **Inputs:** Draft pack.\n- **Actions:** Produce a shareable readout, propose next steps, and create a lightweight customer panel habit (5–10 engaged users). Run [references/CHECKLISTS.md](references/CHECKLISTS.md) and score with [references/RUBRIC.md](references/RUBRIC.md).\n- **Outputs:** Final User Interview Pack + Risks/Open questions/Next steps.\n- **Checks:** Stakeholders can restate (a) key learning, (b) decision implication, (c) what happens next.\n\n## Quality gate (required)\n- Use [references/CHECKLISTS.md](references/CHECKLISTS.md) and [references/RUBRIC.md](references/RUBRIC.md).\n- Always include: **Risks**, **Open questions**, **Next steps**.\n\n## Anti-patterns (common failure modes)\n\n1. **Feature-wish-list interviews** — Asking “What features do you want?” produces unreliable wishlists. Instead, elicit specific past stories (“Last time you tried to…”) and infer needs from behavior.\n2. **Leading questions / confirmation bias** — Framing questions that nudge toward a desired answer (“Don’t you think X is a problem?”). Every question should be neutral and open-ended.\n3. **Convenience sampling** — Interviewing whoever is available (internal colleagues, power users who volunteer) instead of recruiting participants who match the behavioral/recency criteria the study requires.\n4. **Synthesis-free interviews** — Running all sessions but never synthesizing across them. Insights decay rapidly; debrief immediately and cluster themes before moving on.\n5. **Secondhand dilution** — Only the interviewer attends, then summarizes findings in a slide deck. PM + design should observe live or listen to recordings to preserve signal fidelity.\n\n## Examples\n\n**Example 1 (Discovery):** “I’m redesigning onboarding for a B2B product. Create a recruiting plan + discussion guide for 8 discovery interviews with new trial users.”\nExpected: participant criteria, outreach + screener, discovery guide, notes template, synthesis plan, and a ready-to-run pack.\n\n**Example 2 (Switch/JTBD):** “We lose deals to spreadsheets. Run switch interviews to learn what triggers teams to move off spreadsheets and what they try instead.”\nExpected: switch interview guide (timeline + forces), recruiting criteria emphasizing recency, and a synthesis structure that outputs ‘push/pull/anxieties/habits’.\n\n**Boundary example (redirect to usability-testing):** “We have a prototype and need to watch users complete tasks to find friction points.”\nResponse: redirect to `usability-testing`; this skill focuses on open-ended story elicitation, not task-based evaluation with success criteria.\n\n**Boundary example (redirect to conducting-interviews):** “Help me create an interview guide for hiring a senior PM.”\nResponse: redirect to `conducting-interviews`; this skill covers user/customer research interviews, not hiring/candidate evaluation.\n\n**Boundary example (anti-pattern):** “Ask users what features they want and build whatever they say.”\nResponse: redirect to story-based interviewing; clarify decision context; avoid 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