TL;DR
User interviews are less about asking the right questions and more about noticing how people think. We run one-on-one conversations using think-aloud walkthroughs and pay close attention to hesitation, because those moments tend to reveal more than direct answers ever do.
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What this is really about
User interviews are often described as a structured process with a guide and a set of questions. In practice, the most useful interviews feel much more like a conversation.
We are paying attention to how someone makes sense of what is in front of them, even when they are not fully aware of it themselves. That has been true across very different work, whether we are talking to young athletes on SheSports, professionals navigating World Perspectives, or users working through exercises on Before the Field.
Where interviews go wrong
Most interviews are designed to confirm rather than explore. You can usually hear it in the questions, which tend to ask whether something makes sense or whether someone would use it. Common patterns include:
- Asking for validation instead of observation
- Framing questions that lead to “yes” answers
- Collecting feedback that sounds positive but is not actionable
People are generally polite and want to be helpful, so they say yes or something close to yes. That kind of feedback feels useful, but it does not reflect how someone will behave when they are using the product on their own.
What we pay attention to instead
One-on-one conversations
We meet with users individually, with two of us in each session. This setup allows one of us to stay focused on the conversation while the other watches more closely for signals. In practice, that means we are looking for:
- Moments where someone pauses
- Small signs of confusion or uncertainty
- Shifts in how they are interpreting what they see
Think-aloud over direct questions
We ask people to walk us through what they are doing and what they think is happening at each step. This gives us a clearer view into their mental model than direct questions ever do. As they talk, we listen for:
- How they describe what a feature does
- What they expect to happen next
- Where their interpretation diverges from intent
- Any moments of confusion
In Before the Field, this made it clear when an exercise was supporting reflection and when it was simply creating friction.
The moments people hesitate
The most useful signals are often subtle and easy to miss if you are focused on answers instead of behavior. These moments often look like:
- Pausing before taking the next step
- Rereading something more than once
- Expressing mild uncertainty before continuing
- Worrying about being wrong
In World Perspectives, brief hesitation around navigation revealed where the structure needed to be clearer. In SheSports, those same moments showed us where younger users were interpreting prompts differently than expected.
Keeping things intentionally unfinished
Work we present is usually low or medium fidelity. Having something appear in a draft state ensures that users understand their feedback will provide meaningful direction and not derail something that already exists. Higher fidelity prototypes that look too finished can actually discourage user interaction.
We are not looking for opinions as much as for patterns in behavior. These signals tell us whether the product aligns with how people already think, or whether it is asking them to adapt too much.
A quick example
On one project, everyone completed a particular step, but paused before doing so. People reread the screen, hesitated, and sometimes went back to check something before continuing. Nothing technically failed, but something was off. That moment told us:
- The structure did not quite match expectations
- The labeling was unclear
- The flow needed to be adjusted
Once we made that change, people moved through the experience more naturally.
Final thought
User interviews are often framed as a way to get answers, but in practice, they are a way to observe behavior. If you focus on what people say, you tend to get polite feedback. If you pay attention to how they move through something, you start to see what actually works.