What is everyone's favourite early-stage pre-design (before prototyping) user interview tactics?

Question

I think it would be great for the Product Hunt community to learn from everyone's different methods of pre-design (before prototyping) user interviews during early-stage primary market research of your projects, and what are the methods you most use.

Understandably each project has unique use-cases for different tactics, though think about the methods you use most often, and what has the most impact and successful outcomes for your project's success.

It could be:

- Different types of online survey or questionnaire strategies
- Group video Interviews
- 1-to-1 Interviews
- Group workshops
- Various forum-based discussions
- Social media polling
- Product purchase intent questions
- Testing ideas and getting feedback through events

I myself, really love testing ideas and getting feedback through events, I find it enables me to build trust with people in a neutral setting. Whilst online surveys enable me to gain a deeper insight into the intent, needs, and pain points of these people, enlightening me to problems or ideas I'd not observed or thought of.

Various user research tactics during this early-stage of primary market research I've not yet done enough of is group video interviews and workshops, so if you've done a lot of this, I'd love to learn about your success rate and overall experiences with such methods.

Discuss in the comments section...

Duncan A Forbes · Accepted Answer

Thank you @ahmed_elsamadisi.  I've rephrased my question below, to make it more specific and clear, since my question was too broad. Yet I'll add, that is an interesting method of prototyping.

During the User Research phase with prototypes, I like to use Figma to mock-up, then design a prototype, whereby we then use Userberry (https://www.useberry.com/) for prototype analytics and heat mapping. Saves having to deploy anything.

...

Ok, so before going to the fun part of user research, this is more aimed towards the user interview stage my actual question.

So what early-stage pre-design user interview tactics do you use before doing any prototyping?  Before observational or interstitial analysis can occur, so during your product discovery phase.

Ahmed Elsamadisi · Answer

@duncanaforbes I focus on 2 questions:  - can you go on a vent about all the annoying things about using our product? - if you were to design a new product what would it do or look like?  These questions often get me pretty close the problem the customer is feeling.  I then quickly (with Narrator) quantify how common that problem is. And say “what if I told you that only __% of customers do that?” This often gets a response where the user rationalizes the data and in the process highlights the fundamental issues or gaps that exists

Ahmed Elsamadisi · Answer

Honestly, prototyping.

We use this open-source project called react-json-schema and added some endpoints around it and thus we can deploy working products really easily.

Then we give it to the customer and watch what they do!

Catherine Crandall · Answer

I took my clickable Invision product prototype to an event.  I approached people on the off-hours (around the pool!), at lunchtime, approached speakers after their talks.  Either demo'd the prototype or schedule a time to do it later.  I also approached people (employees) in places where dietary supplements are sold (my app is for vitamin and supplement organization). I also signed up as a "client" at General Assembly UXbootcamp - the students did research for me using Facebook and in-person research. Questionnaires and 1-on-1 with the app screens.

What is everyone's favourite early-stage pre-design (before prototyping) user interview tactics?

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