User interview questions
30 questions organized by research goal. Steal them straight into your interview guide.
How to use this list
These are scaffolding, not a script. Pick 6–10 questions that map to your specific research goal, sequence them from broad to narrow, and leave 60% of your hour for follow-ups. The follow-up — "tell me more about that specific time" — is where the actual learning lives.
Two sins to avoid: leading questions (anything starting with "would you…"), and rapid-fire pacing that turns a conversation into an interrogation. The interviewee's tangents are usually more valuable than your prepared next question. Follow them.
Warm-up & context
Q.Walk me through what you do day-to-day in your role.
Q.What does a normal week look like for you?
Q.How long have you been doing this kind of work?
Q.What tools or systems do you spend the most time in?
Workflow & current behavior
Q.Show me how you'd normally do [task]. (Screen-share if remote.)
Q.Tell me about the last time you did this. Walk me through what happened, step by step.
Q.What happens right before this step? What happens right after?
Q.Where do you switch between tools? What gets dropped, copied, or duplicated?
Q.When does this go smoothly? When does it not?
Motivations & goals
Q.What outcome are you trying to get from this?
Q.How do you know when you've done it well?
Q.What does success look like for someone in your role?
Q.If this whole step disappeared tomorrow, what would change for you?
Pain points & friction
Q.What's the most annoying part of this whole process?
Q.When was the last time something here actually broke for you?
Q.What workarounds have you built? Why did you build them?
Q.If you could wave a wand and fix one thing, what would it be?
Q.What do you tell new teammates to watch out for?
Alternatives & comparisons
Q.What do you currently use to handle this — even if it's a workaround?
Q.What did you use before? Why did you switch?
Q.Have you ever tried [closest competitor or alternative]? What happened?
Q.If you had to switch tomorrow, what would you switch to and why?
Q.What would have to be true for you to give up your current setup?
Specific feature / prototype reaction
Q.When you look at this, what do you think it does? (Show, don't describe.)
Q.Where do your eyes go first? Why?
Q.If you wanted to do [task], where would you click?
Q.What's missing from this view that would surprise you if it weren't here?
Q.On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to use this regularly? Why that number and not one lower?
Q.What would have to change for that number to go up by 2?
Q.Who else on your team should I show this to?
Follow-up prompts that work
Every prepared question above gets 80% better with the right follow-up. Memorize these five.
→Can you tell me more about that specific time?
→Walk me through exactly what happened.
→What did you do next?
→Why did you choose that over the alternatives?
→How did that make you feel — frustrated, neutral, surprised?
Practice these in a live session
GoNoGo lets you rehearse interview questions out loud against an AI persona grounded in real public conversations. You hear how the questions land, where they get vague, and which follow-ups actually surface signal.
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Frequently asked questions
How many of these should I use in one 60-minute interview?+
Are these questions for product research or for sales discovery?+
How do I avoid leading questions?+
More on user interviews