How to plan a user interview study

A good user interview starts before the call begins.

The live conversation is the part everyone sees, but the quality of that conversation depends on what happens before it: the research goal, the participant criteria, the session structure, the questions, the roles, and the plan for what happens after the interview ends.

Planning does not need to make the session feel rigid. It simply gives your team enough direction to run focused conversations and turn them into actionable insights.

Start with one clear research goal

Before writing questions or recruiting participants, define what you need to learn.

A strong research goal keeps the study focused and helps your team avoid turning one interview into a catch-all conversation about everything.

For example, instead of planning a study around a broad goal like “understand our users,” narrow it down:

• Understand why new users hesitate during onboarding

• Learn how customers evaluate tools before choosing one

• Explore how people describe a specific problem in their own words

• Validate whether an early concept makes sense to the target audience

• Understand what information users need before they feel ready to take action

A clear goal also helps your team decide what not to ask. That is just as important.

Define who you need to speak with

The right participants depend on the question your team is trying to answer.

For some studies, you may need existing users. For others, you may need prospects, new customers, churned customers, power users, people in a specific role, or participants who recently completed a certain action.

Before recruiting, define the criteria that make someone relevant to the study.

Ask:

• What experience should participants have?

• What role, behavior, or need should they match?

• Do we need one audience group or multiple segments?

• Are there people we should exclude from this study?

• What screening questions can help us qualify them?

This helps your team spend the session with people who can actually help answer the research question.

Choose the right session format

Not every user interview needs the same structure.

Some sessions are discovery conversations. Others are concept tests, customer interviews, or messaging reviews. In general, interviews can be structured, semi-structured or unstructured.

The format should match the goal. The clearer the format, the easier it is to prepare the right questions and materials.

Prepare a discussion guide

A discussion guide is not a word-for-word script. It is a flexible structure that helps the moderator stay focused while leaving room for follow-up questions.

A simple guide can include:

• Session introduction

• Consent or recording note

• Warm-up questions

• Main topics or tasks

• Follow-up prompts

• Wrap-up questions

• Notes for the moderator

Try to organize the guide from broad to specific. Start by understanding the participant’s context, then move into the main topic, idea, product, or experience you want to explore.

Leave space for follow-up questions. The best parts of a live interview often come from asking one more question at the right moment (and prepare some possible follow-up questions as well).

Align the team before the session

Moderated research often involves more than one person.

Before the study begins, decide who will moderate, who will observe, who will take notes, and how teammates should contribute during the session.

This helps avoid confusion during the call. It also makes the participant experience smoother.

If stakeholders are joining as observers, make sure they understand their role. They should listen, capture useful moments, and avoid interrupting the flow unless the session setup allows it.

A little alignment before the session can make the conversation feel much more natural. Likewise, a little debrief after the interview, while it is fresh in your head, forms agreement and makes results surface quicker.

Plan the logistics

Even a strong discussion guide can fall apart if the setup is messy.

Before launching the study, check the practical details:

• Session length

• Participant instructions

• Calendar availability

• Time-zone support

• Meeting link

• Recording setup

• Screening questions

• Reminder emails

• Incentives, if relevant

• Booking limits or participant quotas

The goal is to make joining the session feel simple for participants and manageable for your team.

Decide how findings will be reviewed

Planning should not stop at the interview itself.

Before sessions begin, think about how you or your team will review recordings, organize notes, identify patterns, create highlights, and connect findings back to the research goal. This makes the analysis stage easier later. It also keeps the team focused on the reason the study was created in the first place and keeps everything rooted by the study objective.

A user interview is not finished when the call ends. The conversation needs to become something your team can revisit, share, and use.

How Useberry Interviews helps with planning

Useberry Interviews helps teams plan and manage live research conversations from one connected workflow.

You can create a moderated study, connect calendar and meeting tools, set session details, invite participants, add screening questions, manage bookings, record sessions, and keep findings connected to the study they came from.

That gives your team a clearer path from planning the interview to reviewing what was learned afterward.

See how it works in Useberry: Explore Useberry Interviews

Continue exploring the Interviews Library

Once your study is planned, the next step is learning how to run the conversation itself.

Back to the main guide: Useberry Interviews: A Complete Guide to Planning, Running, and Analyzing Better Research Conversations