How To Ask Business-Centric User Research Questions - Part One
By Kerstin Huang, Senior Researcher at TikTok
& Claudia Natasia, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Riley AI
Are we asking the right questions to our users? Do our questions actually help us find insights to inform the business objectives we’re hoping to achieve? Are we leading users on with our questions? One problem that people often face when running user interviews is knowing the right questions to ask.
We’re here to share a list of tried-and-true questions for evaluating the adoption and retention of products, so you can feel confident that you’re asking the right questions.
This week, we’ll start with questions to help you understand how to build Adoption for your products. We’re going to divide the questions into two major sections:
Discovery
Exploring opportunities to cultivate adoption for a product that does not currently exist
Evaluation
Evaluating how to drive more adoption for a product that already exists
Discovery
Discovering pain points on an existing workflow that can be transformed into opportunities for new products:
Current Behavior & Challenges
Understanding the status quo can help you figure out opportunities for improvement and quick adoption.
How are you currently doing [Task A]?
Walk me through your current experience completing [Task A]?
What challenges do you currently experience when completing [Task A]?
What are the products and services that you currently use to help you do [Task A]?
How often do you use these products or services?
What’s your experience like with these products or services?
How would you feel if these products and services were taken away? Why?
Are there any frustrations that you experience when using these products or services?
Can you describe a recent experience where you experienced these frustrations?
Existing Status Quo
Exploring current products that users already love can illuminate ways of influencing their behavior that are already proven to work in the past.
Tell me about a product that you keep using over and over again
How did you discover this product?
Why did you start using it?
How often do you use it?
Why do you like it / continue to use it?
Evaluation
Evaluating how to improve adoption on an existing product:
Understanding & Impression
Frustrations with using the product or not understanding how to use the product could be a blocker to adoption.
What’s your impression of [Product A]?
What do you like/dislike about [Product A]?
How are you currently using [Product A]?
What frustrations, if any, do you experience when using [Product A]?
If you were to describe how to use [Product A] to a colleague, how would you describe it?
Tell me about your first experience using [Product A]. How did you learn how to use it?
What, if anything, was challenging when you were first learning how to use [Product A]? What, if anything, could have made the onboarding experience easier?
Fit
Realizing that the product doesn’t quite match original expectations deters usage.
What motivated you to use/buy [Product A]?
At that time, what features or aspects of [Product A] did you find most compelling?
Back then, did you have any concerns/reservations about trying [Product A]?
If yes, what are they?
What motivated you to purchase [Product A] over other platforms you were evaluating?
Thinking back to the reason why you decided to use/buy [Product A], would you say that the product meets your expectations?
Why or why not?
Thinking back to the reason why you decided to use/buy [Product A], are there ways that the product has surprised you beyond your expectations?
Perceived Value
Not understanding how using the product is more valuable than the alternative is a barrier for adoption.
How valuable is [Product A] for you? Why?
In what specific ways, if any, has our product helped you?
How does [Product A] compare to other solutions that you may have tried?
How would you feel if [Product A] was removed from your organization tomorrow? What, if anything, would you not be able to accomplish with another tool?
What capabilities do you wish [Product A] would have that it does not have today? Why?
Stay tuned for next week, where we will share questions to help you understand Retention!
Kerstin is a Sr. Researcher at TikTok, focusing on User Growth and Campaigns for TikTok Shop. Prior to that, Kerstin grew her career by being the first researcher at a series A Sales Enablement startup and helped evangelize data and research as the company scaled to series F. Kerstin met Claudia in her previous role and was able to quickly bond over their passion for collaborating cross-functionally to integrate revenue metrics, product data analytics, and research to develop data-backed strategies to drive businesses forward.
Kerstin is studying for her MBA at Berkeley and has a Bachelors of Science in Informatics from the University of Washington.
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Claudia is the CEO & Co-Founder of Riley AI. Prior to founding Riley AI, Claudia led product, strategy, and data science teams across the Enterprise and Financial Technology space. Her product strategies led to a $5B total valuation, a successful international acquisition, and scaled organizations to multi-million dollars in revenue. Claudia is passionate about making data-driven strategies collaborative and accessible to every single organization.
Claudia completed her MBA and Bachelor degrees at the University of California, Berkeley.
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