Broaden your questions

When brainstorming interview questions, it's typical to come up with a long list of mostly closed questions. For example, “Do you work in an office?” or “Do you have to attend meetings during the workday?”

While these questions ask for the information you want to find out, they give little room for participants to elaborate. So the next step is to broaden these questions or turn them into open-ended questions. This will allow you to get unanticipated stories and build rapport with participants, which is crucial if you want to gather accurate, in-depth information.

Review your list and ask yourself how each question can be improved. For example, the two aforementioned questions can be replaced with an open-ended question — “Can you describe a typical day at work?”^[1]

Instead of asking people how they might do something in the future, ask them about how they do it now or how they have done it in the past. For example, the question "Would you use this feature?" can be replaced with "How are you currently accomplishing this task?" or "How have you accomplished this task in the past?"