How to conduct user interviews to evaluate PMF?
Jul 22, 2022 . 6 min read . 459 views
title: 'How to conduct user interviews to evaluate PMF?' publishedAt: '2022-07-22' summary: 'At early stage, there are only two things that matter. Talking to users and building product. Hence, user interviews become super important....' category: '#FindingPMF #UserInterviews'
At an early stage, there are only two things that matter. Talking to users and building products. Hence, user interviews become super important.
Start by framing a problem hypothesis.
Format: “I believe [customer segment] experience [problem] when [doing task] AND/OR because [of constraint]”
Examples:
- I believe office goers experience pain when finding cabs because of the lack of cabs at a location at a particular time.
- I believe freelancers experience frustration when they have to pay upwards of 30% of their project income for finding work on freelancer marketplaces.
Next, Design your customer’s segment persona.
Personas are profiles of fictional, archetypal customers that describe their personal stories/goals/motivations, based on a synthesis of findings from interviews, ethnography, and other customer research.
Typical elements of a persona
- Name and image
- Job description, if B2B
- Decision maker or a taker? (i.e., role in decision-making unit)
- Degree of independence vs. reliance on others’ opinions
- How tech-savvy?
- Key demographic and behavioural information (e.g., when/where/why/how often they use the product)
- Key goals, needs, worries, motivations
- Quotes can help illustrate these
- Implications of goals/needs/etc. for solution
- Values time or money more
- Preference for predictability vs. novelty; risk aversion
Typically has 1-3 primary personas with different needs and aspirations is considered good. You can also consider including anti-personas. These are the customer segments you do not want to design for.
Once you have built the rough personas identified and designed you can start interviewing these in batches to gather more insights.
How many user interviews should you conduct to get meaningful insights?
Justin Wilcox has a 3-of-5 rule for this.
- Start by interviewing a batch of 5 customers (one at a time)
- Analyze those interviews
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 until…
- At least 3 of the last 5 people you’ve interviewed, are Early Adopters.
Remember, early adopters, are those who know they have the problem and are actively seeking a solution.
Early adopters will often describe the same problems similarly. (If you manage to have 60% or 3 of 5 people you might have found your early adopters on a small scale)
If you are having a hard time finding people who are actively seeking your solution, you might be too early or too late to the market.
How to structure your user interviews?
You can begin the interview by setting some context using the Vision/Framing/Weakness/Pedestal/Ask framework from The Mom Test. (mnemonic: “Very Few Wizards Properly Ask”)
- Vision: you’re an entrepreneur trying to solve horrible problem X [Do NOT mention your specific solution]
- Framing: set expectations by mentioning you are at a very early stage [so, you won’t be selling something]
- Weakness: say why you need help [to show you won’t be a time waster, and to pose a challenge – people like to fix things]
- Pedestal: say why the target can help [people like to be helpful and to show they are smart; also, if you’ve been referred to them by someone, mention this]
- Ask: explicitly ask for their help [in doing so, address potential concerns about the time commitment and privacy]
Split your user questions into 3 segments:
- Persona: Learn more about your user and their deep desires and motivations
- Problem: Learn more about the problem you are solving and what the user thinks about it
- Solution: Observe what the user thinks about your solution to the problem
Following are a bunch of questions across stages that you can ask.
Persona
- What is your name and role at your company?
- How do you fit into your company’s department structure? Overall in the company?
- What is your budget like? Who has to approve your purchases?
- How do you discover new products for work? Do you need any approval to try them?
- Have you tried anything new recently?
- What is a typical day like on your job?
- What are the top 3 challenges you face in your job?
- What are the top 3 challenges you face in your job related to [industry X]? (Industry X being the one your startup is in)
- Dig deeper into their typical day on anything that sounds painful or expensive. (You can add some hyperbole here to get them to rant a bit by saying things like “that sounds inefficient…” or “that sounds expensive…”)
Problem
-
Tell me how you do [task X] today
-
How much time do you spend doing [task X]? (Task X being anything they mentioned in their typical day that stood out)
-
Do you use any [tools/tricks/apps] to do the task?
-
In completing the task, if you could wave a magic wand and do anything you can’t do today, what would it be?
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Last time you did the task, what were you doing right before and right after?
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What’s the hardest part about [problem context]?
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Can you tell me about the last time that happened? [Stories can be vivid]
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Why was that task hard?
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How does X problem affect you?
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How have you dealt with or solved [Problem X]?
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What don’t you love about the solutions you’ve tried?
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Why do you want to do [Customer Solution X]?
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What would that let you do?
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How are you coping without it?
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Where do you find information about [problem context]?
Questions for probing emotional signals
- Tell me more about that
- That seems to bug you—I’ll bet there’s a story here
- What makes it so awful?
- Why haven’t you been able to fix this?
- You seem excited about that—It’s a big deal?
Solution
- Walk them through the problems you believe your solution solves. Do they agree?
- Does [your solution] solve any of their problems?
- Would you be willing to pay for our solution? Would [X] be reasonable?
- If they’re willing to pay your price and like the idea then…”Would you be willing to start right away?”
Remember to Always end the interview with an ask. e.g: intros to others with the same problem.