Documenting Research Interviews

‘Teresa Torres' book, Continuous Discovery Habits, is an absolute masterpiece. One of the chapters in the book introduces the interview snapshot; a one-pager template for capturing the most important insights from an interview.

The snapshot contains five sections:

1. The interviewee name, photo and quick facts

2. A memorable quote - this can help trigger memories of the interview

3. An experience map that reflects the story that you collected in the interview

4. A list of opportunities that you heard

5. A list of insights from the interview

I think this snapshot is fantastic, but I think it can be improved. Teresa gives clear instructions on how to complete the first four sections but when it comes to Insights she just says that an insight is anything interesting that came up that is not an opportunity. This is a bit vague and leaves too much to chance, in my opinion.

When we say we are looking for Insights, we are really trying to uncover the hidden motivations behind people's actions. I think the four forces of the Jobs-to-be-Done framework can help people uncover those hidden motivations both during the interview and writing it up afterwards.

I go into this in a lot more detail about the forces and the snapshot changes in my article below.

This Week’s Updates

Enabling the Team

How WFH Can Actually Strengthen Bonds Between Coworkers by Beth Schinoff, Ashley E. Hardin, Kris Byron, and Rachel Balven
Dive into research findings indicating that remote work can strengthen bonds between coworkers by fostering more meaningful interactions and increasing empathy.

Founder-Style Leadership by Marty Cagan
The value of founder-style leadership is in empowering product teams, advocating for a leadership approach that fosters collaboration and aligns with product development.

Product Direction

Why Every Company Needs A Value Architecture by Daniel Schmidt
The concept of value architecture offers strategic insights valuable for senior professionals shaping product strategies.

Why It's Finally Time For The Individual Contributor PM To Shine by Peter Yang
IC PMs can drive innovation and product excellence without necessarily taking on managerial roles, moving beyond traditional management hierarchies.

Continuous Research

How To Document Research Interviews by Rory Madden
After doing a customer interview you need to synthesise your insights right away before your memory fades. And because time is always tight, we'll share a quick and simple format so you can get back to other work.

Democratizing AI In Research Without Blowing Your Foot Off by Ned Dwyer | Great Question
Use AI in UX research without compromising privacy or transparency. Protect sensitive data, set access controls, and ensure traceable AI insights. [Sponsored Content]

Continuous Design

How To Learn And Practice Product Management In A Feature Factory by John Cutler
Strategies for mastering design skills; emphasizing deliberate practice, feedback loops, and consistent application to achieve proficiency.

Continuous Planning For UX Teams by Raquel Piqueras
Consider transitioning from semester-based to continuous planning in UX teams, aligning with agile development to enhance collaboration and responsiveness.

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Deployment Or Large Monorepos by Rasmus Vestergaard, Kasper Munck
This case study goes into Uber's reimagined continuous deployment system for microservices, focusing on automating deployments, improving safety, and managing large monorepos with increasing commit volumes.

Why AI Can't Replace Developers: The Real Limits Of AI In Coding by Michael Amachree
AI tools can assist with simple tasks, but they cannot replace the nuanced understanding and creativity that human developers bring to coding.

UXDX USA Speakers to look froward to!
Building the Future: Leadership, Design & AI

Want to start planning your days at UXDX USA 2025 in New York? How about these great talks related to building the future!

Muriel Naim discusses how to infuse more humanity into tech practices with layoffs. Daniela Jorge will discuss how design drives transformational business results. Ashley Beecy explores how AI is transforming healthcare, focusing on safer and more efficient delivery. Secure your spot now and be part of these crucial conversations shaping the future of leadership, design & AI!

Did you know that UXDX is also on BlueSky now? You can follow us here @uxdx.com

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Video of the Week
Server-Driven UI at Priceline

Aadi Deshpande (VP of Engineering) and Anthony Padronaggio (Design Manager) from Priceline dive into the challenges of creating consistent user experiences across platforms. In this session, they share how Server-Driven UI bridges the gap between web and app teams, aligning design systems, governance, and development for seamless scalability. Watch the full session here: 👇

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question: How would you classify your organisation’s maturity in understanding and using behavioral research insights?

When it comes to phrasing research questions, 32.9% of respondents are using opinion-style research. With the popularity of focus groups and our default mode of asking for opinions I suspect this is actually higher than people believe.

In second place, self-reported behavior took 23.9%. This is definitely an improvement as we want to understand how people behave and not wha they say they do. But self-reported behaviour is still very unreliable.

21.9% use a combination of observed behavior and underlying emotion-based questions, which is the gold standard of testing. Finally, 21.3% focused on evidence-based behaviour.

If you want to learn more how you can improve your interviewing check out our course on Continuous Research.