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Alex Debecker's avatar

Clarifying emotions is such a good one. It’s so hard. The number of times a customer has told me they ‘hate’ how something works in our product, then when I probe further it turns out they use this specific thing like once a month and it’s not that big a deal.

I wonder if that has evolved with time. Words like ‘epic’ or ‘amazing’ or ‘awesome’ for example are used a lot to describe basic, low-level interest stuff (‘this coffee is awesome’ — is it really? It inspires awe?).

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Jeroen Coelen's avatar

It's one of the best tricks to understand the prominence of problems and to let the customer articulate what they mean. Another trick I use is to ask: can you rephrase that with other words. Also reveals gems.

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Alex Debecker's avatar

I’ll need to try that one!

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Danni Swalef's avatar

Indeed! Also a good one: ask 5x why. This is a known user research interview method to get to the heart of things, to the root cause.

Also, when testing a product or prototype, and they say "hmmmm" you ask "is this what you expected" or "urrhm" can indicate a complexity in your product they had to think about (too long).

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Jeroen Coelen's avatar

Very true. Five why works great! Expectations is also very important, good additions.

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