Before the chat

• Know your learning objectives and write down your questions ahead of time.

As the chat starts

• Avoid having too many people around the table, which can be intimidating to the user.
• Put the user at ease — ask them how it's going, where they're calling from, questions about themselves and their lives, exchange jokes, do small talk, etc…

Throughout the chat

• Your goal is to learn as much as possible.

• Avoid interrupting users or speaking too much — you're paying by the word!

  • One exception to this is when a user rambles on something you don't care about.

• There's an art to user research: you need it to feel like a normal, casual chat, while actually letting the user do as much of the talking as possible and hitting your learning objectives.

• Be warm and smiling.

• Encourage the user to speak, by nodding and "hmm hmm"ing during the conversation.

• Ask open-ended questions (what / how / why) and not close-ended ones (do you…?)

• Be careful not to ask loaded questions.

  • Bad: "So do you have a hard time building culture when working remotely?"
  • Good: "What are your top problems about working remotely?"

• Ask a lot of follow-up questions.

  • "Why?"
  • "Tell me more."

• Leverage silence to get them to talk more. People hate silence and will do everything to fill it. Count the threads in your carpet, fiddle with a pen, wonder what you're going to eat tonight… Let them interrupt the silence.

  • One useful format of question is also the unfinished sentence: "and so then you…"

• Answer their questions with questions.

  • USER: do you guys intend to build X? YOU: do you think we should? What do you need X for?

• Try to understand the intention behind feature requests.

  • Suggestions can be informative, but you're most interested in the user's problem.
  • For example, "I want my team to receive an email every time I take a new note" is a solution. The underlying problem is "I need to keep my team in the loop."

• Ask users for actuals, not intentions.

  • Bad: would you use a product like this?
  • Good: when's the last time you used a product like this? Why? How was it?
  • Bad: would you pay for something like this?
  • Good: how much do you currently pay for similar products?

• Take a lot of notes.

  • It's better if the note-taker is not the same person leading the conversation, so that person can focus on the chat.

• After the chat

  • Summarize your key takeaways in 3-6 bullet points.
  • Debrief with the team. Let everyone talk of their takeaways, and what surprised them.

Interesting related books:

• The Mom Test
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany