Upgrade your product with these user interview tips

Oko Davaasuren, APAC regional director for startup programs at Techstars.

When you’re creating a product for your startup, your initial challenge is introducing it to your target users. At this stage, misunderstandings will happen; things don’t take shape as planned. Users might not understand your service and decide to delete your app. An on-demand startup might mislead users to believe that a feature exists that isn’t up and running yet.

Situations like these usually owe their roots to ineffective user interviews.

So how do you prevent this from happening?

Oko Davaasuren, regional Asia Pacific director of startup programs for Techstars, has some ideas. During his session at at TiA Jakarta 2016, he spoke from his experience co-founding startups in his home country, Mongolia, about how to turn the user interview into a powerful tool.

The first step of design thinking

Design thinking cheat sheet. Image source: d.School of Stanford University

User interviews are based on the first step of the Design Thinking approach: empathy. “It’s a great methodology to study. Design thinking starts with human values and ends with human values,” Oko said.

Practicing empathy means actively listening for stories and data points to offer a solution beyond what your target audience needs.

“The point of a user interview is to search for ideas. You never know what’s coming for you. Listen for stories and data points so they can lead you to the idea you’re looking for,” Oko noted.

The three-peat

It’s okay to ‘three-peat’ questions – repeating inquiries more than twice – said Oko. Patience is key. “When you repeat a question, the truth comes out and your interviewee will stop lying. Respect the time taken to get insights out and stay consistently curious,” he said.

Make interviews conversational, and they feel more seamless, Oko said. “If you do it well, the other side won’t notice you’re asking them a set of questions about your product.”

Embrace experimentation

Oko believes that an experimentation-driven mindset with your product is the perfect tool to achieve results from your interview. For example, don’t prototype simply to validate your ideas, he said.

“Everything you’re doing is bullshit until proven successful,” he noted. “Failure is an important step you must go through to be aware of your surroundings, empathize, and eventually get up to try again.”