As a PM — How to design interview questions?(part 1)

The interview process is: 1. Determine the purpose and set the objectives of the interview. 2. Formulate interview questions. 3. Develop an interview strategy. 4. Designate or randomly select suitable respondents. 5. Collect and analyze interview results.

I suggest that your interview should only focus on a product, or even a function, so that you can achieve in-depth and non-divergent interview results.

The purpose of the interview can heavily influence how to design your questions. For example, your purpose is to know why the payment rate of the product is so low now? or Looking for pain points, what kind of pain points do users face? So that you can design an new product. These all affect how you structure your questions, so determining the purpose of the interview should be your first priority.

Second, you need to be clear about what you want to achieve in this interview. These goals preferably follow the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) principle.

e.g. I will be conducting a total of two interviews in this series. The first interview must find out the main reasons why users are willing to use our products but won’t pay? It is hoped that the first three factors can be identified. Can the goal be achieved and how many variables need to be measured and ultimately summarized?

Many experts say that more open-ended questions should be asked in interviews. I completely agree with them, so I won’t repeat them here. I would like to specifically mention that when we ask open-ended questions, it is easy to let the question diverge and the respondent cannot answer in depth. The result will be that you won’t get valuable interview results.

To avoid this, I suggest that open-ended questions can be designed in two ways. The first is to explain your purpose for asking this question. When the respondent knows why you asked the question? What do you want to know? He would explain better and give details about the problem.

But don’t let it be a leading question. A bad way to explain for example “it is because someone else said something, so I’m wonder…” This kind of intervention on the subjective views of others will affect the subjective consciousness of the respondent.

A good example is… “What do you think of our products?” “I ask this question because I want the product to better meet your needs, so if there are any needs that not being satisfying or the design is great, please let me know.”

Explain why is much better. “How” or “what” is a word that is difficult to understand, and users will not know how to answer it.

The second way is to design question groups. The first question is an open-ended question. You design the corresponding next question based on the topic that the user may discuss, and try to dig into the reason as much as possible.

This is user-based content, corresponding to interview questions. But you have to prepare ahead of time, list possible topics of discussion, and keep an open mind at all times. The user may answer you unexpectedly, and all preparations can be temporarily put on hold.

In the next article, I’ll cover how to design an interview strategy.