In the discovery phase, the main goal of interviews is to capture important information about users: their backgrounds, beliefs, motivations, desires, or needs. These interviews are usually semistructured, which allows for more flexibility. Instead of following a rigid script, semistructured interviews rely on an interview guide or discussion guide.

A discussion guide is a set of questions and topics you would like to discuss with a participant. Unlike a scripted interview, the questions in a discussion guide can be asked out of order, omitted, or added. The guide helps encourage participants to tell their stories while keeping the researcher on track.

Set aside time to carefully craft your interview guide. Without it, you risk asking leading questions as you might try to think of questions on the spot or forget to cover relevant topics, which can compromise your data's validity.^[1]