userinterview

Getting Those User Interview Questions!

Posted on by Patrick Wee

 

User Interview questions are extreemely important to be able to come up with a great user interview!

 
With my topic map in tip-top shape, we’re now ready to come up with awesome User Interview questions. The hope is that these questions help me get through the main needs, opportunities and problems of the current user when it comes to their alarm clock app, and see whether I can validte these. It’s also a way to find out what other things may be bothering users. It’s also lots of fun!

So in total, I came up with 10 questions which I based on my topic map. In particular, I tried to avoid complicated questions, like compounded questions that will confuse the interviewee. I also made it an effort to avoid leading questions, so we really get the truth out of the user. I also make sure to ask the user about the past instead of the future so I can a more accurate picture of what’s really happeing. With this in mind, here are the User Interview questions I came up with.

  • How do you feel about your current alarm clock app?
  • How often did you use your alarm clock app last month?
  • What were the reasons you used your alarm clock app?
  • What do you like or dislike aboutyour alarm clock app?
  • If there was something you could add or remove from your alarm clock app,w hat would that be?
  • How does your alarm clock app improve/worsen your sleep quality?
  • How do you like or dislike the visuals and appearance of the user interface of your alarm clock app?
  • How dyou like or dislike the sounds of your alarm clock app?
  • How have you interacted with your alarm clock app while you were travelling?
  • Would you find it useful or useless to share information about your sleeping/wake-up times with your doctor? 

With these questions in hand, I am ready to conduct a real user interview! I am really excited as to what responses I will get for these questions! 

Alarm Clock App UX Interview Questions: Brain Dump, Topic Map, and Card Sort in Action

Posted on by Patrick Wee

Great user interview questions are a foundation of great user experience design. But in order to come up with these great questions, we need to be able to start from somewhere. So to come up with ideas of possible avenues to explore in a user interview, producing a topic map through brain dumping and a card sort are very useful tools.

Let me run you through each of these three processes I undertook to come up with my topic map for my UX Interview questions for a possible new and awesome alarm clock app.

Brain Dump

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My brain dump! Included cool ideas like sharing, nice colors and possible API collaboration!

The first step is just a brain dump, where you literally dump all the ideas you’ve got in your brain onto your best friends as a UX designer, post-its and a sharpie! Write down everything that comes to mind. Every single bit and detail. With me, I was able to come up with some bits and pieces as shown above. I literally included everything I thought about. Even an API, which may sound kind-of weird, I included, as who knows, that might be the next million dollar idea!

Topic Map

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My topic map! It included themes such as Will It Ring, Sleep Quality and Visuals!

With a drain dump on hand, I now started to work on a topic map. In this step, what’s needed is a grouping of the main themes in the brain dump. In this case, I just put together ideas that made sense together, and labelled them nicely. With that, I’ve come up with a cool topic map of a possible alarm clock app ideas!

Card Sort

After card sorting, here's my revised topic map! See how a few things were moved out of "Will it ring?"

After card sorting, here’s my revised topic map! See how a few things were moved out of “Will it ring?”

“Two eyes are better than one,” right? So, the next step is to get someone to look at the topic map, and see whether the connections make sense, if at all. This person is to move things around, remove parts that may be redundant, or just rearrange the topic map. This gets a good second opinion of the main themes of the project. In my case, my partner decided to move a few things out of Will it Ring and put it into audio instead. I never thought of it that way actually–and so, doing these card sorts are actually very very helpful!

With these three processes: brain dump, topic map and card sort, I was able to really brainstorm possible UX interview questions for this alarm clock app I am building! I’m really excited where this project is going to be headed. Seems like I’m off to a good start, though!