Interview Guide

Overview

Generate complete interview guides with opening scripts, demographic questions, core research questions, follow-up probes, and closing sequences in under 3 minutes. Produces ready-to-use guides that typically take 2-3 hours to write manually when creating them from scratch.

Works for UX research sessions testing mobile apps or web interfaces, B2B SaaS customer discovery interviews for product validation, academic dissertation qualitative research, market research focus groups, and stakeholder interviews. The template structures your questions logically, formats them as open-ended prompts instead of yes/no questions, eliminates leading language that biases responses, and includes professional rapport-building scripts that put participants at ease.

If you’ve never written research interview questions before, the template handles the structure so you can focus on your specific research topic. If you’re experienced with qualitative research methods, it cuts prep time from hours to minutes while maintaining the rigor you need for academic IRB approval or professional UX research standards.

Use Cases

• Launch UX research for mobile app navigation testing in 48 hours - Generate semi-structured interview guides for 8-10 user sessions testing checkout flow redesigns, onboarding sequences, or dashboard navigation patterns
• Conduct B2B SaaS customer discovery interviews to validate product-market fit - Create structured interview protocols for 20+ founder and product manager interviews exploring pain points in project management, team collaboration, or workflow automation
• Run academic dissertation research with qualitative interview methods - Build complete interview protocols for thesis or dissertation data collection on topics like remote work productivity, digital learning experiences, or consumer behavior patterns
• Develop focus group guides for marketing message testing - Create moderation scripts to validate brand positioning, ad copy effectiveness, or product naming with target B2B buyers or consumer segments
• Build customer feedback interview scripts for SaaS onboarding optimization - Generate quick 15-20 minute interview guides for talking to users within their first week about activation barriers, feature confusion, or support needs
• Design user research interviews for healthcare app accessibility studies - Create culturally appropriate interview guides for testing medical appointment booking, patient portal usability, or telehealth experiences with diverse age groups
• Generate academic research protocols for PhD qualitative data collection - Build IRB-ready interview guides with proper consent language, demographic capture, and research ethics compliance for social science or education research

Template

Create an interview guide for research on {{topic}}.

Research Objectives:
{{objectives}}

Participant Profile: {{participantProfile}}

Interview Type: {{interviewType}}

Duration: {{duration}} minutes

Please create:
1. Opening script and rapport building
2. Demographic questions
3. Core research questions (open-ended)
4. Follow-up probes
5. Closing questions
6. Thank you and next steps

Key Themes to Explore:
{{themes}}

Ensure questions are:
- Open-ended
- Non-leading
- Clear and specific
- Ordered logically
- Culturally appropriate

Properties

• topic: Single-line Text
• objectives: Multi-line Text
• participantProfile: Single-line Text
• interviewType: Single Selection
  • Options: Semi-structured, Structured, Unstructured, Focus Group
• duration: Single-line Text (default: 60)
• themes: Multi-line Text

Benefits

• Save 2-3 hours per interview guide - Generate complete interview protocols in under 5 minutes instead of spending half a day structuring questions and writing scripts
• Get professional rapport-building scripts ready in 60 seconds - Sound polished and credible even if you’ve never moderated research interviews or focus groups before
• Eliminate leading questions that bias participant responses - The template structures all questions as open-ended exploration instead of yes/no prompts that contaminate qualitative data
• Never get stuck with one-word answers - Built-in follow-up probes for every question section so you know exactly what to ask when participants say “it’s fine” or give surface-level responses
• Run 10, 20, or 50+ interviews with consistent question structure - Use the same core framework across all sessions so you can reliably compare findings and identify patterns in qualitative data
• Increase participant trust and response quality - Professional documentation with proper consent language and confidentiality statements makes participants feel safe sharing honest feedback
• Generate 5-7 different interview guides in under 30 minutes - Create separate protocols for different user segments, research phases, or stakeholder groups without starting from scratch each time

Example Output

Here’s what this template actually generates when you ask it to create an interview guide for UX research on mobile banking apps:

Input:

Topic: User experience with mobile banking apps
Objectives: Understand pain points in current mobile banking interfaces,
identify wished features users request, discover trust factors that influence
banking app usage
Participant Profile: Mobile banking users aged 25-45 who use banking apps weekly
Interview Type: Semi-structured
Duration: 45 minutes
Themes: Security concerns, UI preferences and usability issues, feature usage
patterns, comparison with traditional banking methods

Generated output:

# Mobile Banking UX Research Interview Guide

Duration: 45 minutes
Format: Semi-structured
Participant: Mobile banking users, 25-45, weekly usage

## 1. Opening Script (3 min)

"Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. I'm researching how people
use mobile banking apps to help improve these experiences. There are no right
or wrong answers - I'm interested in your honest thoughts and experiences.

Everything you share will be kept confidential. I'll be taking notes, and with
your permission, recording the session so I can focus on our conversation. The
recording is only for my analysis and won't be shared.

Do you have any questions before we start?"

## 2. Demographic Questions (2 min)

- What's your age range? [25-30, 31-35, 36-40, 41-45]
- What do you do for work?
- Which bank(s) do you currently use?
- How long have you been using mobile banking apps?
- What device do you primarily use? [iOS/Android, model if relevant]

## 3. Core Research Questions (30 min)

### Current Usage Patterns

Q1: Walk me through the last time you used your banking app. What were you
trying to do?

Probes:
- What happened next?
- How did that feel?
- Did anything surprise you?

Q2: What do you typically use your banking app for?

Probes:
- How often do you do each of these tasks?
- Are there things you avoid doing in the app?
- Why do you choose the app over other methods for these tasks?

### Pain Points & Usability

Q3: Describe a time when the banking app frustrated you or didn't work as
expected.

Probes:
- What were you trying to accomplish?
- What went wrong?
- How did you resolve it?
- Has this happened more than once?

### Security & Trust

Q6: How do you feel about the security of your banking app?

Probes:
- What makes you feel secure or insecure?
- Have you ever hesitated to do something because of security concerns?
- What security features do you use? [biometrics, passwords, etc.]

## 4. Closing Questions (8 min)

Q12: If you were designing a banking app from scratch, what would be the three
most important things to get right?

Q13: Is there anything about your mobile banking experience we haven't
discussed that you think is important?

## 5. Thank You & Next Steps (2 min)

"This has been incredibly helpful. Your insights will directly inform how we
think about improving mobile banking experiences.

As a next step, I'll be analyzing feedback from all participants. If you're
interested, I can share a summary of our findings in [timeframe]."

## Interviewer Notes

- Let participants show you their app if they want to demonstrate something
- Watch for emotional reactions when discussing security or frustrations
- Note specific feature names they mention
- If participant goes off-topic, gently redirect: "That's interesting. Going
  back to..."

The complete output includes 11 core questions with 3-4 probes each, proper time allocation for each section, demographic capture, and practical interviewer tips.

Common Mistakes This Prevents

Asking leading questions that bias participant responses - Amateur interview guides often include questions like “Don’t you think the interface is confusing?” or “Wouldn’t you prefer a simpler checkout process?” These prime participants to agree rather than share honest opinions. The template structures all questions as neutral, open-ended exploration: “How do you feel about the interface?” or “Walk me through your last checkout experience.”

Getting stuck when participants give one-word answers - You ask a question, they say “It’s fine” or “Not really,” and you don’t know what to ask next. The template includes 3-4 strategic follow-up probes for every question section - specific prompts like “Can you give me an example of when that happened?” or “What would make that better for you?”

Running out of time before covering important research topics - You spend 30 minutes on demographic questions and small talk, then rush through your actual research questions in the last 10 minutes. Or you finish 20 minutes early with awkward silence. The template breaks down precise timing for each section - 3 minutes for opening, 2 minutes for demographics, 30 minutes for core questions, etc.

Jumping into hard questions before building trust - You start immediately with “Tell me about a time you failed” or “What frustrates you most about this product?” Participants respond with guarded, socially acceptable answers instead of honest insights. The template includes professional opening scripts with rapport-building language, confidentiality statements, and permission requests that create psychological safety.

Using research jargon normal people don’t understand - Academic or UX researchers often ask questions like “What’s your mental model of the navigation hierarchy?” or “How does this align with your heuristic evaluation?” Most participants have no idea what these terms mean. The template translates research concepts into plain language anyone can answer: “How do you usually find what you need in the app?”

Forgetting to capture demographic data you’ll need later - You conduct 15 interviews, start analyzing patterns, and realize you have no idea which participants were new users vs. experienced users, which age groups struggled most, or which industries they work in. The template builds demographic questions into every guide upfront - age, occupation, experience level, context-specific details.

Asking culturally inappropriate questions for your participant group - What works for interviewing Silicon Valley tech workers might offend healthcare professionals or participants from different cultural backgrounds. Questions about income, family structure, or personal habits need cultural sensitivity. The template includes reminders to review questions for cultural appropriateness based on your specific participant demographics.

Creating yes/no questions that kill conversation - “Do you like this feature?” gets you a yes or no. “How often do you use this?” gets you a number. Neither generates the rich qualitative insights you need. The template formats every core question to invite storytelling: “Tell me about the last time you used this feature” or “Walk me through what you were trying to accomplish.”

How to Get the Most From This Template

The quality of your interview guide depends on how specific you are with the inputs. Vague objectives like “understand users better” produce generic questions that won’t uncover actionable insights. Specific objectives like “identify the top 3 friction points that cause cart abandonment during mobile checkout” or “discover why enterprise buyers choose Slack over Microsoft Teams” generate targeted questions that directly inform product decisions.

For academic research: Include your theoretical framework in the objectives field. If you’re studying technology adoption using Diffusion of Innovation Theory, mention that explicitly. This shapes questions around constructs like relative advantage, compatibility, and observability rather than generic “what do you think” prompts. PhD candidates doing qualitative dissertation research should also note IRB requirements - the template will include appropriate consent language and confidentiality statements.

Participant profiles determine question specificity. “Marketing professionals” generates broad questions about marketing work. “B2B SaaS marketing directors at Series A startups with 20-50 employees managing $50K-$200K monthly ad budgets” produces questions about specific challenges like attribution modeling for long sales cycles, marketing-sales alignment with small teams, and budget allocation across channels. The more specific your profile, the more relevant your questions.

Themes should be concrete topics, not abstract concepts. Instead of “user satisfaction,” write “specific features users request in support tickets, workflows they’ve built workarounds for, reasons they recommend or don’t recommend the product to colleagues.” Instead of “pain points,” try “tasks that take longer than 5 minutes but feel like they should be instant, features users start using but abandon, error messages that confuse people.”

Interview type affects question structure. Semi-structured interviews work best for most UX research, customer discovery, and exploratory studies. You get consistency across 10-20 sessions while staying flexible when participants mention unexpected insights. Fully structured interviews with identical questions work better for academic research with 50+ participants where you need quantifiable qualitative data. Unstructured interviews suit very early discovery when you don’t know what matters yet - like interviewing the first 5 potential customers for a new product idea.

Duration affects question depth. 30-minute interviews suit quick feedback sessions on specific features. 45-60 minutes work for standard UX research or customer discovery. 90-120 minute sessions make sense for academic research, ethnographic studies, or deep exploration of complex topics like workplace culture or decision-making processes. The template adjusts question count and probe depth based on your specified duration.

Frequently Used With

• Methodology Design - Plan your overall research approach before creating specific interview guides
• Data Collection Plan - Coordinate multiple research methods including interviews, surveys, and observation
• Research Summary - Turn interview transcripts and notes into clear findings reports for stakeholders

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