Blind interviews
Background
We conduct interviews with our users so as to learn about their difficulties and create useful products. If you have a small set of customers then we can interview all the customers and factor ALL their needs. But as your set of customers get bigger then it will be impossible to interview all of them. You have to find a better way to learn about user needs. As part of this article, I want to clarify that we aren’t talking about visually blind users but about choosing the right mix of customers and NOT sticking to the same set of customers all the time.
Classify your customers
Easier said than done! Customers differ by maturity, size, usage, region depending on your industry. We want to understand their workflows and their pressing problems that would help them make their lives easier. So, a collaboration with other functions like sales, marketing and UX might really help to categorize your customers.
What are blind interviews?
There are many customers in each category. If you keep interviewing the same customer in the same category all the time then you will land up building a product for only a few customers. Even within the same category, customers have different needs. If we interview different customers randomly (without them know who we are and vice versa) then they are likely to state the WHOLE truth. For example, if they know that you work for a certain company and you are interviewing them then they might only state the good or bad aspects of your product. They might be biased. Alternatively, if they are using a competitor’s product then they might find it awkward to really state their needs. So blind interviews are when the interviewer only knows the title of the interviewee and not the company etc. The whole goal being understanding the market, which includes your customers and even potential customers.
An interesting fact - The interviewee should be very careful with the way they ask questions so as to not reveal their identity.
Lessons learnt from blind interviews
There are many lessons learnt from these interviews.
You learn what you are doing well vs. areas of improvement, if the user is using your product.
You learn the areas of your product that are misused. Sometimes, you learn that users are not using the product the way it is meant to be. Maybe you need to improve your user experience or “Help” section”.
You may offer 40 features that are of use to the customer but there is this one important feature that you don’t offer, due to which the customer is using your competitor’s product (even though the experience is lousy!)
You understand the market better. There are new workflows and user personas that have come up due to market changes. This one time, we got to know that many of our customers have such hard documentation issues that they hired a new position for it. Even that persona has it hard and so we have an opportunity there to make a difference.
You also understand the user’s digital maturity i.e. the learning curve that the user has to undergo to use your software.
Final Thoughts
With blind interviews, we have more confidence with our prioritization. We are a STEP better and building the right thing, which is likely to be used by users, instead of just interviewing the same ones. We also have the opportunity of using surveys as a means to get feedback from other customers (Tools like Pendo now make it easier to solicit it!).