What are the 4 parts of an Interview?

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When they first start, clients tell me that User or Customer interviews are daunting. They ask “How do you get started?” and “What questions do you ask?”

Having a plan makes it much easier and helps you on the way to making interviews appear like “conversations” to the interviewee.

Let’s look at the four parts of a typical interview.

Introduction

State who you are, why you’re striking up a conversation with them and ask permission to use some of their time.

Demographics

Some quick Yes/No questions to establish whether this person is a potential User of Customer in the future. If not, abandon the interview politely now and move on to the next one.

Discovery

This is the longest part of the interview and uses lots of Open Questions to learn more about their world and the scope and type of problems that they are facing. Typical questions are “When you last had <this problem> what did you do?”. You follow the answers taking a mental note of the language used, emotions and body language. Did they feel anger? Sorrow? Happiness when discussing the resolution of their problem?

Closure

Thank the interviewee for their time, collect their details, permission to contact them again and any other people you should speak to.

So, there you have it – Introduction, Demographics, Discovery and Closure.

Don’t forget to check out the videos which go into each section in more detail.

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