A simple-but-useful structure for conducting any interview
Use this template to structure interviews and generate a wealth of data to help you design the best solution possible.
Before you can design a solution, you must first understand the problem by gathering information from your stakeholders, potential users, and others who work in the environment you’re investigating.
The user interviews template helps you:
Gather meaningful feedback
Better understand and empathize with user needs
Translate feedback into action items
Get team-wide alignment and buy-in for research-based solutions
How to use the user interviews template
To use Mural’s user interviews template, follow the steps outlined below with your team.
Step 1: Record your observations
Use the Observations section of the template to brainstorm and record any observations they may have about the topic of your user research.
Step 2: Assign an interviewer and a notetaker from your team for each interview
Assign one person to be the interviewer, and one to be the notetaker for each of your user interviews. This helps avoid leading the user to any specific answers and keep your interview open-ended.
Step 3: Conduct your research interviews
Once you have all your assignments set, have your team brainstorm the questions to ask, and conduct interviews. Make sure that your questions are open-ended (not simple yes or no questions), and make room for probing questions to follow up and get more granular insights. Use color-coded sticky notes to record the questions and any notes from the user interviews for further analysis later in the process.
Step 4: Analyze and review your key takeaways
Once you’ve conducted all your interviews, look for commonalities or themes across the user interviews as well as your team’s observations. This will help inform next steps and make the process of building action items straightforward.
Tips for running user interview research
To make the most of the Mural user interview template, you should:
Make sure that everyone participates in brainstorming and contributes their observations regarding the subject of your research — the broader the engagement, the more likely you are to be able to identify important themes
Use Mural’s easy sharing features and flexible permissions to get everyone into the same digital space and contributing in real time, or asynchronously
Once you’ve finished your interviews and conducted your analysis, create action items based on the themes you’ve identified and get broad alignment and buy-in for your solutions
Mural makes it easy to collaboratively brainstorm, take notes, and create action items
Sticky notes & text
Add ideas, action items, and more as a sticky note or text box — then change the colors and cluster to identify patterns and new solutions.
Mapping and diagramming
Build quick and easy visualizations of flows, maps, processes, hierarchies, journeys, and more.
Create & publish custom templates
Save time and scale methods across your organization by publishing templates to your workspace.
Icons, GIFs, & images
Express complex ideas visually or lead an engaging team-building activity with Noun Project, GIPHY, and Unsplash integrations.
Flexible permissions
Control access to collaboration features with view-only, edit, and facilitator settings.
Real-time collaboration
Add more productivity and engagement to meetings and calls with features to guide collaboration.
How do I conduct user research interviews?
What are good questions to ask in a user interview?
Mural is the only platform that offers both a shared workspace and training on the LUMA System™, a practical way to collaborate that anyone can learn and apply.
