Professional conference workshop: building skills to conduct user interviews

Context

I pitched and presented and presented this workshop at Product Camp, an annual professional development “unconference” for product managers. Being an “unconference” meant that no speakers were booked in advance; instead, any attendee could pitch a topic in the morning session, and the pitches with the most votes from attendees became the sessions on the agenda.

Picking a topic: understanding participant needs

Before the conference, I informally surveyed some colleagues to understand their challenges at work. Many product professionals mentioned a “sinking in your gut” feeling around big releases, usually because a lot of resources had been invested in the project without a lot of evidence from user research that it would meet real user needs. Product people felt that they were often “shooting in the dark” and wanted to feel more confident about their decision-making. Many also intuitively knew that to achieve that, they needed to better understand their users, but they hadn’t learned how to conduct effective user research.

This was the perfect professional development gap for me to fill, because I had been working as a product manager on a platform for managing user research. As part of my job, I both conducted a lot of user research and interviewed many user researchers about how they did their jobs.

Workshop goals

Culture goals

At the same conference in previous years, I had noticed two things:

1. the sessions tended to be in a seminar format, with the presenter talking through a slide deck and the attendees sitting as an audience; and
2. despite the organizers’ intentions for the “unconference” style to make this a day of peer-to-peer learning, the event retained the “networking” feel of a more typical conference… attendees wanted to make a good impression on each other in this tight-knit professional community.

I hoped to push back on these two trends by designing a session that:

1. felt less like a seminar and more like a hands-on workshop; and
2. felt safe to admit “not knowing everything” - because it’s hard to learn new skills when you’re spending energy on keeping up appearances and trying to look competent.

Learning goals

I outlined these learning objectives for the workshop:

I hoped that participants would gain skills that they could immediately apply when they went back to their day jobs.

Workshop

Pitching the workshop - an opportunity for priming

The conference opened with a round of rapid-fire topic pitches from anyone who wished to present. The conference attendees voted on the sessions they most wanted to attend, and the most popular pitches became the conference’s agenda. Here was my pitch:

Have you ever made a product decision based on a hunch, a deadline, and a prayer… and then  secretly felt haunted by the thought, “I really hope our users actually want this?” Well, you could ask your users… but you have to ask the right questions. I’m offering hands-on workshop, where I’ll share practical methods for designing, conducting, and synthesizing user interviews. I can’t promise that you won’t be up at night for your next launch, but at least it won’t be because you don’t know what your users want!

This pitch, in addition to resonating with attendees and attracting votes, primed folks for the workshop by speaking aloud the taboo feeling of “not knowing” and letting folks know that they would be expected to fully participate in the workshop format. It attracted participants with a compatible mindset for what I was offering.

Opening: connecting to participants’ motivations

I opened the workshop by reiterating the concept in my pitch - crossing your fingers and hoping that users actually want the solutions that they spent months building. I normalized the feeling and opened the floor for people to share how they related to this idea.

This opener helped create a sense of common vulnerability and “not always knowing the answer.” It also got folks into a mindset of learning and curiosity, which created a foundation for the rest of the workshop.

Orienting: what I’m covering and what I’m not covering

I also gave a quick 10,000-foot view of user research, and emphasized that this workshop would only be covering a specific type of user research - discovery or generative interviews - and that many other user research methodologies would be out of scope for today. This helped people know what to expect and encouraged them to keep learning after the workshop.

Designing interviews: asking the right questions

The rest of the workshop had a back-and-forth cadence of presenting an idea, an example of how to apply it, and then an activity for participants to try applying it with their peers. I started by framing research as a way to inform decision-making in support of a goal. If I gave them a scenario with a goal and a decision-to-be-made, could they come up with research questions?

The next concept was to translate research questions into interview questions.

I gave some examples of common traps and best practices, and then asked them to apply those concepts to a given research question.

For these activities, I gave participants some time for solo written reflection, and then asked them to pair up with someone nearby and share their answers. Then I led a debrief as a full group before moving on to the next idea.

Conducting interviews: moderating like a pro

Next, I covered skills and best practices for moderating a user interview, especially ways to reduce bias and leading questions. Each idea had examples phrases that participants could try out for themselves.

I asked participants to form groups of three to practice moderating a mock interview. Creating groups of three, instead of pairs, was intentional so that we could have three roles: a moderator, an interviewee, and a note taker. The note taker role was critical, so that participants could observe others as well as give the moderator feedback after their turn. I ran three rounds so participants could rotate roles.

After some initial nerves, participants got really into this, and you could feel the energy buzzing in the room! After the three rounds, I led a full-group debrief, and it was clear that practicing applying the skills had made things click for a lot of people.

Synthesizing interviews: turning insights into actions

Finally, I talked about how to frame insights from the interviews in a way that would drive action.

I also shared some example formats about how to share interview summaries with stakeholders.

I had let the mock interviews run longer than I initially planned, so I ended up cutting this activity for time. I shared the template with participants after the workshop in case they wanted to try it on their own later.

Closing: 2-2-2

To close the workshop, I wanted participants to more concretely visualize how they would apply what they learned in their own work. I gave them this prompt and encouraged them to record their intentions in their calendar or a reminder app.

Outcomes

The workshop was well-received, and many participants approached me later in the conference to thank me for it. Some even told me how useful it was a year later at the next annual conference! I was also approached by an organizer for the weekly meetup Product Coffee and invited to lead the same workshop for this other professional development community.

I also planted some seeds of culture change for the conference. The next year, I noticed a few more folks pitching skill-building topics or sharing worksheets and activity prompts in their sessions. With a little nurturing, I think this trend could make this conference stand out as one of the best ones for product professionals to truly learn new skills from each other - not just network!

Reflections

Overall, I was really happy with this workshop and how engaged the participants were. If I were to do it again, I would consider the following changes:

• I tried to fit a lot in a small amount of time! For an hour or less, I would remove the last learning objective and synthesis section so that the other two sections have more space to breathe. In order to cover all the content, I would aim for 1.5 to 2 hours.
• Instead of opening with a question for the full-group, I could change the format to a 1-2-4-All exercise: first jotting down solo reflections, then sharing in pairs, then sharing in quads, then sharing with the full group. This would create more psychological safety for folks to be vulnerable and encourage everyone to share and connect with another participant - not just those willing to speak in front of the full group!
• I would encourage kinesthetic movement and new connections between participants by having them move to a new reflection partner after the first exercise. At a conference like this, a little extra structure to help folks meet more new people can go a long way!
• Before the 2-2-2 closing, I would add another closing prompt to ask folks to reflect back on our original purpose - to build our confidence in getting closer to the users. This would follow a closing structure of looking inward (what have we learned here today?) before looking outward (how do I bridge back into my day-to-day life?).
• I would consider having a quick prompt to “rate your confidence” on the learning objectives and incorporate those into the opener and closer.