I spent all day yesterday observing interviews, recalling a few of the critical basics that elicit rich interview data:

1. A great interviewer will constantly drive the user’s dialog from the general to the specific.  I recommend doing this by asking for specific examples (“Tell me the last time you…”) and grow your probing from there.  As you gather them, keep the user’s stories neatly tucked in your back pocket, ready to bring out anytime again for other areas of deep probing.  As much as they can role model and visualize those concrete experiences, the deeper reflection you’re able to elicit.

2. When a user is sharing a specific example, creatively embody that experience by triangulating your questions by exploring it from all different angles.  I like to do this by asking the “what”,
“how”, “why” and, after peeling off that layer, repeating the series of questions.  It’s a constant unraveling of experience, behavior and emotion.

These techniques are the most reliable way of capturing self-report behaviors, which is far superior data to future-predicting behaviors (the poorest kind of user data).  And, generalized questioning — which attempts to get users to vocalize the specific answers being sought — is ungrounded in experience and doesn’t fare well for generating rich detail.  Go for the rich detail — somewhere in there are the answers.