Summarizing your customer interviews in 15 minutes or less.
Early, I wrote Conducting customer interviews to find your first customers for your envisioned product. The last step in the process is “write down 5 most important takeaways”. But some individuals have trouble deciding what’s most important and what’s the format for these summaries. Recently, I learned a new technique so let me show you how you can summarize your customer interviews in 15 minutes with a simple template.
The setup
Customer interviews have been scheduled.
Interview guide has been created. [See my previous article which has an example interview guide if you need help here.]
Principles for summarizing customer interviews
During the interview:
If you are taking notes on a computer while interviewing, open up the Interview Summary Template and write your notes directly at the bottom. Don’t worry if it’s messy.
Take a picture (in-person) or screenshot (virtual) of the interviewee. Why? Keep reading.
Use shorthand notes to help with recall (i.e., highlight key points). You aren’t trying to be a court stenographer
After the interview
Set timer for 15 minutes.
Open up Interview Summary Template
Start with recalling the most memorable quote the person said. Don’t overthink it. Don’t worry if it’s controversial or someone won’t like the quote. If several quotes come to mind, write it down. Editing is done later.
Move to stating some facts about the interviewee
Stick with facts, not opinions (e.g., demographics such as age or age range)
Anything the person said (e.g., “on my android -> android user”, “I live in CT”, “my children”)
If you had a pre-screening survey to qualify the interviewee, look at the information provided
Glance through your notes if you need help with recall
Remember that picture you took? Paste it here. The picture is meant to help mental recall when you look at these days/weeks later.
Now, it’s time to move onto the “Interesting Observations” and “Opportunities”. What’s the difference between the two sections?
Interesting Observations are anything you find interesting, but don’t know exactly what to do with the information. Some examples and guidance:
You’re researching how frequently someone uses feature, but the user talks about a different feature in an entirely different application
The interviewee mentions something they really don’t like, but it has nothing to do with your product directly (e.g., research is on how people pay, interviewee mentions really don’t like door to door sales people)
A test to see if it’s an interesting observation is if you don’t know what action you might do. Did you have a “hmmm…that’s something maybe I want to do more user research on.”
Opportunities are specific improvement ideas that occurred from the interview. A good way to know it’s an opportunity is if you can categorize it as an idea, feature, product improvement, action. Some examples:
What if we did … [XYZ]
Interviewee specifically requested some change (e.g., “If only the application would do [XYZ]”, “Have you guys thought of doing [ABC]…”)
Opportunities answer the what, they don’t have to describe the how or exact tactics. “What if we make a search feature that predicted ahead of time what the user was going to search” is an opportunity, even if you don’t know if it’s technical feasible or viable for the business.
Don’t second guess your own ideas on what’s an opportunity. Like editing, this is part of the brainstorming based on what the user interview. This isn’t an exercise in selecting which opportunity to pursue.
If you’re not sure it’s an opportunity vs interesting observation, put it in the interest observation section.
Read it over and edit the document for clarity.
Save the summary as MMDDYYYY_memorable_quote. Don’t save the file by the interviewee’s name. Unless you have fantastic name recall, I don’t recommend this because you get names confused. If you are doing multiple interviews in a day, add the time HH (military hours) (e.g., 0515202014_the_search_was_broken_all_the_time)
Interview Summary Template | Interview Summary Example
Bottom of the barrel tips
Don’t follow Steve Job’s lead by saying, customers don’t know what they want. Customer don’t know what’s possible, but consumer know what they want or need.
Source:
Product Talk by Teresa Torres