Planning, conducting, and analyzing the results of user interviews is another service provided by UX agencies. But why are user interviews important in UX design?
Read on to find out how businesses can benefit from this service, and what role they play in creating a quality user experience!
Why are user interviews an important part of UX design? The importance of user insight
Before you can understand why user interviews are important, you also have to understand the purpose of UX design. User experience design covers any interaction your potential customers may have with your products and services and aims to make those interactions as easy and pleasant as possible. This is how the most successful products and services are created: by taking into account your users’ needs and expectations and incorporating that data into the UX design process.
This is why methods like user interviews are important.
For your investment in UX design to pay off, you also need to have enough knowledge about the habits of your users. What their expectations are, and how you can meet, or even exceed those expectations. What features do they want to see, what their priorities are, and also what elements they may deem redundant or useless.
Conducting user interviews is one of the most popular methods used by UX agencies to get important, in-depth insight from members of your target audience. This is a qualitative method more focused on just a few participants (usually no more than 12 people) and getting feedback that would be difficult to get in multiple-choice answer surveys.
Of course, if you want to get a full picture of your users’ needs and expectations, you should never limit yourself to one research method. User interviews are important, but they bring even more valuable insight when combined with other tests, or as follow-ups to previous surveys and market research.
To sum up: why are user interviews so important? What benefits do they bring to your business?
The reason why user interviews are important for any business is that:
- They represent a quick and easy way to gain valuable insight into how a member of your target audience views the design of your physical products, services, or even your digital platforms.
- As a qualitative research method, user interviews are great at finding potentially key information that will play a large role in designing the final form of your physical or digital products. While quantitative methods focus on simpler replies and numbers, user interviews allow potential customers to truly flesh out what they think, feel and need.
- The result of user interviews can be combined with other research methods to get a fuller picture of how users view your product and services.
As for the output of user interviews and their importance in UX design, you get:
- valuable qualitative data: notes, transcripts, videos
- an excellent basis to create even more detailed buyer personas
- a way to create even better customer journey maps to focus on the areas of your business that bring you conversions
- an opportunity to test prototypes before entering the market, and avoid having to fix potential errors after the launch of your product
Always remember: the more information you can get about your users, the more fleshed out the UX design process can be. And the more fleshed the UX design process is, the better the chance of you having satisfied, loyal customers that increase your conversion rate!
Why does a UX agency play such an important role in conducting user interviews?
By now you know why user interviews are important. This also means it’s important that they are conducted appropriately. It’s no wonder why many companies choose to hire a UX agency, which is one of your best bets to make sure the correct execution of user interviews and that you get valuable input that you can put to good use.
Still, conducting user interviews is more of a cooperation between your business and the UX agency. For example, you can help in finding the right candidates for the interview, and in creating the scenario of the interview, if there are questions you definitely want to be asked when the agency meets up with the selected candidates.
You can take part in the necessary preparations, but the more time-consuming task of conducting the interviews and presenting their results will be done by the UX agency. Still, this doesn’t make the preparations any less important. It’s important to set a clear goal before the user interviews begin, and what specific answers you are looking for. This will make the UX design process smoother and more effective.
User interviews last for about an hour with each participant. The UX agency will make sure to let users know about the purpose of the interview so they aren’t confused, and will know how to ask the right questions to get you the answers you seek.
