Conducting primary research by way of user interviews is a critical component of SwiftRacks discovery process, better known as the “Swift Stack Methodology”.
In knowing this, it is important to understand that the quality of interviews and the persona of the interviewee(s) are extremely important. If feedback is given by users outside the ideal user persona, this could lead to feedback and changes in the product that actual future customers find undesirable.
The SwiftRacks team has developed a 5 step process, in collaboration with prospective clients/industry experts, for interviewee selection that ensures the target persona is addressed and quality feedback and insight is derived from each interaction. The 5 Step Process for user interviewee selection is as follows:
After lengthy discussions and brainstorming sessions with the founding team, an “ideal” target client persona can be created. With this information, we must segmentize the presumed user base into categories based on shared characteristics among users within the target persona.
Ideally, three proto-user personas are derived from this exercise. For these three personas, we must create hypothetical profiles to define the users. These profiles typically consist of the following information:
Now that we have a general idea of the target audience, the next step is to explore the founding team/industry experts personal and professional network for candidates that fit the profile. Since the industry experts normally work in the field that their business idea is based on, they have numerous former clients and colleagues that have either used similar products or faced the same headaches the business idea seeks to solve.
Once all of the client’s resources have been exhausted, the next step is to explore the networks of Swift Racks internal team for users that fit the target persona.
Although this approach may be slightly less focused, due to the nature of work SwiftRacks engages in, the team has significant exposure to several different industries that may overlap with the subject client’s product. Each team member will be encouraged to reach out to contacts in their network as well as any acquaintance they may have connected with in person or through social media platforms such as LinkedIn.
The aforementioned steps are effective in finding an appropriate group of candidates for interviews. In the case the team is unable to find enough candidates from the standard process, the last resort tactic is to deploy a search via a third-party tool, such as userinterviews.com, to round out the sample group and ensure we are interviewing enough personas to derive a credible conclusion.
Once all potential interview candidates have been selected, the team must send a preliminary screening survey to each member of the sample group. This survey is used to ensure only candidates that fit the target criteria move forward to the interview stage, and candidates with indirect or outdated experience are filtered out. We consider this the final step before we arrive at your sample population for primary research.
Primary research is a powerful tool that helps organizations build better products with direct feedback from its users, but making sure you interview the right people is paramount to avoid setbacks and misdirection. SwiftRacks has developed a robust process to gather an accurate and efficient sample group for interviews to ensure clients garner the feedback they need to develop the best product possible.