Interview for What People Did

Use this when you can only interview, not observe, and you want the interview to produce evidence about what people did rather than what they think they do. Worked in “Watch Users Work to Find What Causes Their Complaints.”

Run the interview in this order:

1. Sit at the user’s own screen, in their own setting.
2. Ask them to show you the last time they did the task. Don’t ask how they usually do it.
3. Follow the artifact: open the file, the report, or the note they used, and ask what each part is for.
4. Ask about specifics that already happened, never about opinions of the future.
5. Never demonstrate the product, and never show them how you’d do it.

“How do you usually do this?” and “Would you use a feature that did this?” produce predictions and compliments, which sit at Level 0. “Show me the last time” produces a record of real behavior, even when an interview is the only method you have.