Create a structured user discovery interview guide

Discovery Interview Guide Skill

Design interviews that surface genuine insight — not validation of what you already believe. Every guide follows a story-based, past-behaviour-focused structure.

Core Principles

1. Never ask about the future. "Would you use X?" tells you nothing. "Tell me about the last time you did X" tells you everything.
2. Interview for behaviour, not opinion. Opinions are cheap. Behaviour is evidence.
3. The 5 Whys. Every surface answer is a door. Keep opening doors.
4. Confirm the problem before exploring the solution. Never show a prototype until you've confirmed the pain exists unprompted.

Interview Structure (60 minutes standard)

1. Warm-Up (5 min)

Build rapport. Get them talking. Don't discuss the topic yet.

• "Tell me a bit about your role and what a typical week looks like for you."
• "What tools do you rely on most day-to-day?"

2. Context Setting (10 min)

Understand their world before diving into the problem space.

• "Walk me through how you currently [handle the domain area]."
• "What does that process look like from start to finish?"
• "Who else is involved when you do this?"

3. Problem Exploration (25 min) — THE CORE

Surface pain without leading.

• "Tell me about the last time you had to [relevant task]. What happened?"
• "What was the hardest part of that?"
• "How did you handle it?"
• "What did you try before settling on that approach?"
• "What does it cost you when this goes wrong?" (time, money, stress, reputation)
• "If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about this process, what would it be?"

⚠️ Do not mention your product or feature during this phase.

4. Current Solutions (10 min)

Understand the competitive landscape from their perspective.

• "What tools or workarounds do you use today for this?"
• "What do you like about [current solution]? What frustrates you?"
• "Have you tried other approaches? What happened?"

5. Wrap-Up (10 min)

• "Is there anything about this topic we haven't covered that you think I should know?"
• "Is there anyone else you'd recommend I speak to?"
• "Would you be open to a follow-up if I have more questions?"

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Output Format

Discovery Interview Guide — [Topic] — [Date]

Research Goal: [One sentence: what decision will this research inform?] Target Participant Profile: [Role, company size, behaviour qualifier]

Screener Questions (for recruiting):

1. [Question] → Must answer: [Y/N or specific]
2. [Question] → Must answer: [Y/N or specific]
3. [Disqualifier question] → Disqualify if: [answer]

Interview Guide:

[Full structured guide using the format above, customised to the specific research topic]

Synthesis Template (fill after each interview):

• Key quote: "[verbatim]"
• Core pain: [1 sentence]
• Current workaround: [what they're doing today]
• Intensity (1–5): [how painful is this?]
• Surprise/unexpected finding: [anything that challenged your assumptions]

Pattern Detection (after 5+ interviews):

• Pain mentioned by [X/N] participants: [theme]
• Workaround used by [X/N] participants: [theme]
• Most emotionally charged moment in interviews: [observation]

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Required Inputs

Ask the user for these if not provided:

• Research topic or question (what decision will this inform?)
• Target participant profile (role, behaviour, company type)
• Session length (30 / 45 / 60 / 90 minutes)
• Number of interviews planned
• Known hypotheses to test or avoid confirming prematurely (optional)

Deeper Materials

This skill ships with support files — use them when they are available:

• references/question-craft.md — Question Craft: Getting Truth Instead of Politeness. Apply it while producing the output; it carries the calibration and judgment calls the method summary above compresses.
• templates/guide-skeleton.md — a fill-in version of the deliverable with the quality gates inline. Offer it when the user wants to work the document themselves rather than have it generated.

Scoring Rubric (0–40)

Score any output of this skill before handing it over; 32+ is ship-quality.

Dimension	0	5	10
Behavioural anchoring	Questions are hypothetical ("Would you use…?") or answerable yes/no	Mostly past-tense, but a few opinion or future-tense questions slipped into the core section	Every problem question is anchored to a specific past event ("tell me about the last time…") and open-ended
Solution containment	The product or feature appears in the screener or early questions, anchoring every answer	Product withheld from questions but the guide gives the interviewer no script for when participants ask what's being built	Product absent from all phases before pain is confirmed, with an inline interviewer note and deflection script guarding the boundary
Screener selectivity	Screeners are self-assessments anyone can pass ("Are you responsible for X?")	Screeners qualify on role and firmographics but include no behaviour check or disqualifier	Screeners qualify on recent, verifiable behaviour, include an explicit disqualifier, and would be hard to guess the "right" answer to
Synthesis machinery	No per-session template or pattern-detection plan; synthesis left to memory	Template exists but lacks intensity rating or surprise capture; pattern thresholds not tied to planned interview count	Per-session template with anchored intensity scale and surprise field, plus pattern detection gated at 5+ interviews with X/N counts matched to the planned sample

Quality Checks

• No future-tense questions ("would you...") — only past-behaviour questions
• Product or solution not mentioned until after pain is confirmed
• Questions open-ended (cannot be answered yes/no)
• Synthesis template included for per-session notes
• Screener questions identify and disqualify wrong participants

Guidelines

• Recommend 5–8 interviews to reach thematic saturation for most discovery questions
• Always record with permission — transcripts beat notes
• If user is new to interviewing: remind them to stay silent after asking a question (aim for 80/20 participant-to-interviewer talking ratio)
• Never synthesise during the interview — do it after, when you can look across sessions
• Flag confirmation bias: if user writes questions that lead toward a predetermined answer, rewrite them as open-ended alternatives

Anti-Patterns

• Do not use future-tense questions ("Would you use this?") — hypothetical responses do not predict real behaviour and produce false confidence in an idea
• Do not mention your product or solution before problem exploration is complete — doing so anchors the participant's responses and invalidates the discovery
• Do not synthesise across fewer than 5 interviews — themes from 2–3 interviews reflect anecdote, not pattern; wait for saturation
• Do not write screener questions that are too easy to pass — if participants can guess the "right" answer, you will recruit the wrong people
• Do not treat participant opinions as evidence of future behaviour — what people say they will do consistently diverges from what they actually do