Ask HN: What are the best questions you've asked your users for feedback?

6 pointssydneyliu10y ago4 comments

There seem to be 2 types of user interviews:

(1) where you talk to somebody with the problem in the target demo and learn about the issue and how they deal with it now to figure out what to build next.

(2) talking to your current users and understanding how to make your product better or how to take it from where it is now to a point where users fall in love with it.

Emmett from Twitch has a really great video on conducting user interviews for case 1.(https://clip.mn/video/yt-qAws7eXItMk). My question is around case 2.

Questions I've seen and used:

-How likely is it that you would recommend the PRODUCT to a friend or colleague? (Net promotor score) -What prompted you to try PRODUCT in the first place? -What did not meet your expectations or what was hard to figure out? -Have you shared PRODUCT with anybody or on social media? -What did you use before using PRODUCT?

The answers have been useful, but was wondering if you guys have any other go-to questions for your users that have provided great insight.

4 comments

loumf10y ago

I use the Jobs-to-be-Done framework and its interviewing techniques. You can see more here:

https://medium.com/the-job-to-be-done/a-script-to-kickstart-...

Essentially

1. You want to interview people who have consumed the product (not just bought, but use)

2. You want to try to reconstruct the product hiring timeline

3. You are looking for hiring criteria which could be functional, emotional, or social.

There's a lot more to it, and lots of stuff out there about it. Look for writings by Bob Moesta, Chris Spiek and Alan Klement -- 37Signals (basecamp), Meetup, and Intercom have been known to use the technique (and have written about it on their blogs)

sydneyliuOP10y ago

This article is fantastic. Thanks so much for the share! Will definitely be studying this and thinking about this when meeting with our users.

MalcolmDiggs10y ago

I like to ask a lot of questions about their expectations. This can be done before or after they've used the product. Simple stuff like:

"What do you expect to be able to accomplish with this product?"

"What do you expect it to look like?"

"How long do you expect it will take you to learn how to use it?"

"What devices do you expect it to be useable on?"

Stuff like that. I've found that when I veer far from their expectations, bad things happen. So I try to really understand what they expect, and align to those expectations unless I have a really good reason not to.

syllogism10y ago

I like "if you could change one thing about PRODUCT, what would it be?"

I hate being asked the net promoter score question. I think it's ridiculous. There's no way people's self-reporting about that are meaningful, and any study that showed it worked empirically for some product can't transfer to your product and users.

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