I’ve created a special Slack group to help you find people for user interviews. It’s called the User Super Lab.
Read on to learn more.
What is it?
User Super Lab is a Slack group to find participants for user interviews.
User interviews (a.k.a. customer development interviews) are 1:1 discussions with a target customer (a.k.a. persona) to understand their needs. Armed with this information, innovators can build better products that meet the needs of those customers.
Ardent believers of customer research/customer interviews/user interviews believe that most innovators don’t talk to customers enough, leading to wasted effort, time, and money building products customers don’t want.
Who is it for?
User Super Lab is ideal for anyone who needs customer feedback including product managers, designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs.
Why do you need user feedback?
User interviews are mandatory. You’ll want to get feedback before building your product roadmap and start building your product.
As innovators — either at a small or large company — we know that customer research is like oxygen.
We cannot predict, with 100% certainty, what customers need and want.
It’s too costly to guess. The consequences of guessing wrong — in terms of time and money — is not something we want to deal with.
How does it work?
Step 1. Post your request.
You have two options when posting your request:
- Option 1. Send a Slack msg w/ A) who’d you like to interview and B) availability.
- Option 2. Use this spreadsheet.
In addition to 1:1 user interviews, you can ask someone to fill out a survey instead.
Step 2. Exchange
We operate on a quid pro quo model. That is, in exchange for someone serving as your interviewee, you promise to serve as an interviewee for them too.
I’d recommend a 40 minute session by default. That gives you 20 minutes to interview the other party, and they have 20 minutes to interview you.
Note: An exchange is not mandatory.
Why a free exchange?
Recruiting research participants is hard, time consuming, and worst of all, costly.
There are no shortage of sites that charge anywhere from $100 to $500 for every single user interview. It doesn’t matter if you’re part of a small or large company; most of us don’t have the budget or authority to pay for 10 user interviews, let alone one.
And for those of us who do have the budget and authority, the process of recruiting participants through these paid services is difficult and time consuming. Unqualified prospects abound, making the whole charade feel like a hiring exercise…except it’s just for a single interview.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the participants?
We operate on an exchange model, so the person you’ll be interviewing (or answering your survey) depends on who you’re paired with.
Currently, our Slack members span different companies and job functions. Here’s a sampling of who might be paired with:
Job Functions
- Executives
- Entrepreneurs
- Customer Success Professionals
- Designers
- Product Managers
- Software Engineers
- Engineering Managers
Companies
Our participants include current and former employees at:
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- Uber
We also have participants who are working at the world’s most notable high growth companies. If there’s a particular background or experience you are seeking, include that in your request.
What questions should I ask during the customer interview?
Here are the questions I ask during 1:1 customer interviews. 😄