Guide6 min read
Write an interview guide that gets stories, not opinions
Most interview guides ask people to predict the future. Here’s how to ask about the recent past instead — with question swaps you can copy.
Mara LindqvistCo-founder & CEO ·
“Would you use a feature that…?” is the most common question in customer interviews and one of the least useful. People are generous and imaginative; they will say yes to almost anything. What they cannot do is invent a detailed story about last Tuesday. Stories are where the evidence lives.
Anchor every section in a real event
Start each part of the guide by asking for a specific, recent moment: the last time they ran payroll, the last time an import failed, the last time they asked a colleague for help. Then stay in that moment with follow-ups until you can picture it.
| Instead of… | Try… |
|---|---|
| Do you find setup difficult? | Tell me about the day you set it up. Where were you? |
| What features would you like? | What did you do the last time the product couldn’t help? |
| How often do you check reports? | When did you last open a report? What were you looking for? |
| Would you pay more for X? | What did you try before this? What did that cost you? |
Structure: wide, then narrow
- 1Warm-up (5 min): their role, their week, what “a good day” looks like.
- 2The story (20 min): one recent event, walked through step by step.
- 3Edges (10 min): workarounds, people they asked, things they gave up on.
- 4Reflection (5 min): only now ask what they would change, and why.
Follow-ups do the real work
Write fewer main questions and more follow-ups. “What happened next?”, “Why then?” and “Show me” will get you further than any carefully worded opener. Leave silence after an answer; people often add the important part a few seconds later.
“If your guide fits on one page, you will spend the interview listening rather than reading.”
Pilot it once
Run the guide with a colleague who matches the profile loosely — someone from support, say. You will find the question that confuses everyone and the section that runs twelve minutes over. Fix both before the first real participant.
Parley, its authors and the companies mentioned here are fictional. This article is demo content for the template and can be replaced with your own.