Free - User interviews - A basic introduction

So you know your users. You understand them, what they do and what makes them tick. Really?

It's surprising how few people have a real understanding of who's using their site. Yes, there is demographic data but to really know your users you must have direct contact. Knowing your users means you know what to do to keep them happy, and keep them returning to your site. Knowing your users is the first step in a fast track to a successful site.

After the interviews

Once you've concluded the interviews you can start to pull the results together. This is a crucial step and can easily go wrong. Care must be taken to ensure you don't distort the results. It can be easy to quickly come to a conclusion, focusing on a specific aspect and ignoring (often key) details. Bear in mind that summarising the results can take longer than the interviews themselves.

Conclusion

Interviews are a great way to find in-depth information about your users. They're fairly easy to organise, need very little facilities, and can be a lot of fun! Without understanding your users, how can your site possibly fulfil their needs?

This article was written by Alistair Gray. Alistair's crazy about usability - so crazy that he works for Webcredible, an industry leading user experience consultancy, helping to make the Internet a better place for everyone. He's very good at eye tracking and extremely talented at information architecture.