Before you have a prototype, you want to learn as much as possible about people's challenges. When you are testing your prototype, you need to know how well you are solving those challenges.


**No matter the product you’re building, you can benefit from talking to users.**‍

If you ask the right questions and leave space for the conversation to unfold organically, those conversations will provide you with actionable and unbiased insights.

The main reason why you should bother conducting interviews with (potential) users, is that you need to test your assumptions. Without feedback from users, all you have is assumptions. Even if you have experienced the problem you are solving yourself and you use your own product, one data point is not enough.

Conducting interviews is one of the best ways to find out if your assumptions are right or wrong, and to understand really well why. That way you spend less time building things that people don’t need.

The questions you need to ask vary depending on the product development phase you’re in and your research goals.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through how we do it at FYI and share the key questions we ask.

What not to ask

Interviewing people is only valuable if you know how to do it. There are three common mistakes people make during interviews that decrease their chances to collect valuable data. Rob Fitzpatrick does a fantastic job analyzing them in-depth in his book The Mom Test.

The first one is asking leading questions. For example, avoid asking, “So your problem with documents is about sharing right?” Instead, ask: “What’s your biggest problem with documents?” Keep the questions really general, and avoid making them suggestive in any way.

Another mistake is asking questions that give you misleading information. For example, avoid asking about generic behavior (what do you usually do?) or behavior in a hypothetical future (what would you do?). Instead, ask about their actual behavior in the past and dig into the details (when was the last time you were looking for a document and you couldn’t find it?).

A third mistake is talking too much about your idea or product. Your goal is to hear the opinion of the person you’re interviewing, not to sell something to them. So try to restrain your interest in talking and really listen.

Conducting interviews successfully boils down to asking the right questions and listening the rest of the time.

So what are the right questions to ask?

It varies, depending on the stage your product development is in. Before you have a prototype, you want to learn as much as possible about people's challenges. That way, you improve your chances of making something people need.

Let’s go through the questions you may ask in that earliest stage.

What's your single biggest challenge?

This is one of our favorite questions at FYI. We start interviews by asking people about their role at their company and their responsibilities. Then we move to this question: “What's your single biggest challenge when it comes to [the thing we're trying to solve]?” For example, “What’s your single biggest challenge when it comes to finding documents?” Another way we may phrase it is, “What’s the hardest part about finding documents?” You want to understand what the specific things are that they find difficult.

Your product is just a means to an end for the customer: they’ll buy it if it solves their challenges and improves their life.