Making user interviews more awkward

Hello from Europe! If you missed my talk at Fosdem on interview techniques that will make your user interviews more awkward while also increasing the quality (and quantity, actually) of the information you get from those interviews, you should absolutely check out the video of the talk here.

I covered why user interviews are so important (you need to understand who your users are and what they care about if you want to create a project that they will love), why users actually often love being interviewed and, of course, the awkward techniques in question, which are strategic awkward silences and asking ‘why’ as a follow-up so many times you sound like a toddler. Also, refusing to make assumptions even when it would seem like that answer to a question is obvious.

Check out the talk, and let me know if you’re at State of Open Con this week!