User Interview 🎙️ Prompts

SUMMARY

Purpose: Conducting user interviews helps product teams deeply understand user behaviours, goals, frustrations, and mental models through qualitative inquiry.

Design Thinking Phase: Empathise

Time: 45–60 min session + 1–2 hours analysis

Difficulty: ⭐⭐

When to use:When exploring a new problem space or validating early hypothesesBefore defining product requirements or mapping user journeysWhen metrics indicate a problem but don’t explain the why

What it is

User interviews are 1:1 qualitative research sessions used to uncover deeper insights about user motivations, behaviours, needs, and pain points. Conducted in a semi-structured format, interviews reveal the why behind user choices — beyond what analytics or usability testing alone can tell you.

📺 Video by NNgroup. Embedded for educational reference.

Why it matters

User interviews help design teams move beyond assumptions and surface-level insight, enabling human-centred decision making across product strategy, design, and experience mapping. Understanding user intent, context and barriers leads to better scoping, smarter prioritisation, and less risk downstream.

When to use

• At the start of a project or sprint to define a real user problem
• When metrics show churn or poor feature performance without clear reasons
• Before designing user flows, storyboards, or wireframes

Benefits

• Rich Insights: Helps uncover user needs that aren’t visible in metrics.
• Flexibility: Works across various project types and timelines.
• User Empathy: Deepens understanding of behaviours and motivations.

How to use it

Here’s a practical step-by-step framework used by experienced design researchers:

1. Define your learning objectives: What do you need to learn, confirm, or explore?
2. Recruit participants: Target 5–8 users per segment. Use screeners aligned with the behaviours you’re designing for.
3. Write a semi-structured guide: Include open-ended questions grounded in real-world contexts and use prompts to probe further.
4. Conduct interviews remotely or in-person: Use active listening and document emotional cues and decision triggers.
5. Debrief and synthesise: Cluster quotes, behaviours or themes using methods like affinity mapping.
6. Share impactful takeaways: Craft a short insights deck or gallery of needs, quoting users directly where possible.

Example Output

Here’s a fictional output artefact for a mobile banking product:

• User Need: Trust that scheduled bill payments won’t fail (3/5 users mentioned anxiety over automation failures)
• Quote: “I check my account daily because I’ve had payments bounce and no notification came through.”
• Design Insight: Users want proactive alerts and reassurance, not just payment logs.
• Opportunity Area: Introduce a payment confirmation UI and early failure warnings.

Common Pitfalls

• Asking leading questions: Avoid yes/no framing. Use open probes like “Tell me about a time...”
• Interviewing without structure: Poorly scoped sessions miss critical learning opportunities. Use a guide and goals.
• Ignoring analysis time: Synthesis is where the value lives. Don’t skip tagging or theming insights.

10 Design-Ready AI Prompts for User Interview – UX/UI Edition

How These Prompts Work (C.S.I.R. Framework)

Each of the templates below follows the C.S.I.R. method — a proven structure for writing clear, effective prompts that get better results from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or any other LLM.

C.S.I.R. stands for:

• Context: Who you are and the UX situation you're working in
• Specific Info: Key design inputs, tasks, or constraints the AI should consider
• Intent: What you want the AI to help you achieve
• Response Format: The structure or format you want the AI to return (e.g. checklist, table, journey map)

Level up your career with smarter AI prompts.Get templates used by UX leaders — no guesswork, just results.Design faster, research smarter, and ship with confidence.First one’s free. Unlock all 10 by becoming a member.

Prompt Template 1: “Draft a User Interview Discussion Guide”

Draft a User Interview Discussion Guide

Context: You are a UX researcher preparing for generative research to explore user frustrations in [your product’s core experience].  
Specific Info: We currently have [no prior research/early metrics on dropoff]. Our target users are [describe persona or segment].  
Intent: Create a semi-structured discussion guide with 5–7 open-ended questions to explore user behaviours, beliefs, and unmet needs.  
Response Format: Provide the questions in bullet point format, grouped by theme (e.g. context, emotion, workarounds).

If topic coverage seems vague or problem framing unclear, ask a clarification question before continuing.