Questions it can answer
- What product should we build?
- What problems can we solve for people?
- What are the opportunities?
What is a customer discovery interview?
Customer discovery interviews are used to build a deep understanding of a problem space and identify potential opportunities. They are broad and technology agnostic. Typically they explore the behaviors, attitudes and experiences of people within the context of a problem space. They do not explore solutions to problems or evaluate hypotheses, instead focus on generating open-ended insight on the context of the problem.
Advantages
- Understand the problem to be solved and potential opportunities
- Gather evidence that the problem space exists and is worth solving
- Enables shared vision on what the problem is and why it’s important to be solved
Limitations
- Will not evaluate specific solutions to problems, instead consider using an evaluative interview.
- Sample size will be small due to the qualitative nature of interviews. Consider pairing interviews with a survey to backup your findings with quantitative data.
- Interview participants will be recalling from their memory of the problem space. Consider an observational method such as field studies to witness the problem first-hand.