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My absolute favorite questions that I love to ask users to garner impactful insight.

Overview

As designers, we all have different aspects of the the job that we like. Some of us really like UI work, some of us really like information architecture; I am a sucker for data gathering and research.

But more specifically, I am a sucker for finding those tiny nuggets of gold that users don’t even know that they have for us.

Today, I’m going to share with you my favorite questions that I love to ask users to garner impactful insight.

My favorite questions

“Without holding back, nothing is off the table here; what absolutely sucks about this product?”

Then I normally like to follow it with:

“What would make this product ten times better?”

All I’m gonna say is be ready.

Without a doubt, these are by far my favorite questions to ask users because it gives them space to really tell you what’s on their mind, and many times, they’re not going to hold back because you actively told them not to.

When to use them

This line of questioning is idea for when you get the sense that a user is telling you what you want to hear, but isn’t telling you what you need to know.

This type of thing can happen for many reasons, but essentially you want do two things when implementing this line of questioning:

• Observe what the user is doing vs what they are saying.
• Really listen to not just what they’re saying, but how they’re saying it.

Yes, self-reported data is often skewed because all data that is self-reported is filtered through internalized heuristics, values, and cognitive biases.

However, it is important to get as much data as you can when conducting UX research, as your goal here is not so much to take what your users are saying directly at face value, but to dig deep to find out where the discrepancies are between what your users are saying vs what they’re actually doing.

If you can spot an area where they’re saying one thing and doing another, that can be a great area for value innovation.

Bringing it all together

To recap:

My favorite questions to ask your user

• “Without holding back, nothing is off the table here; what absolutely sucks about this product?”
• “What would make this product ten times better?”

When to use these questions

• When the user is saying one thing and doing another
• When you’re getting the impression that a user is telling you what you want to hear, but isn’t telling you what you need to know.

What it can do for you

• Provide clarity that you may not normally get without introducing a set of polarizing questions to your testing.

Nick Lawrence Design
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