planning-discovery-interviewslisted

# Planning Discovery Interviews ## Overview Discovery interviews explore **attitudes, motivations, and lived experience** — not UI preferences ("users are not designers; don't ask them to predict reactions to things they haven't used"). A good interview guide is the main defense against the two killers: **leading questions** and **solution-jumping**. ## When to use - Before any round of generative customer research. - Planning contextual inquiry, field studies, or diary studies. - Reviewing draft questions for bias before fielding. ## The question-quality rules - **Open over closed.** Open questions surface the unexpected. Prefer narrative prompts: "Walk me through a typical day," "Tell me about the last time you…" - **Funnel.** Start broad and open, then narrow to specifics. - **No leading questions.** Don't embed the answer. Neutral questions start with *how/what*; leading ones often start with *did/was/is*. "Was the checkout hard?" → "What was easy or difficult about checking out?" Never name an interface element or assume an emotion. - **Critical-incident over hypothetical.** Ask about real past events ("the last time you…"), not predictions ("would you use…?"). People are bad at predicting their own behavior. - **Ladder / 5 Whys.** Follow answers down to root motivation ("Why does that matter to you?") — but insert facts, not assumptions, and stop at the real driver. - **One idea per question.** No compound/double-barreled questions. ## Workflow 1. **Set research