You finish a good interview with a head full of insight. Then you jump into the next meeting. By the evening you remember the general mood and maybe one quote, and you're not sure you got that one right.
Interview notes don't need to be long. They need to happen fast, and they need to separate what the person said from what you made of it.
Before the call
Write down what you're trying to learn this round, in one or two questions. Not a script, just the point. "Why do people stop planning meals?" is enough.
Note who you're talking to and how you found them. Five people from the same online group will tell you a lot about that group and not much about anyone else.
Ask before you record anything, and tell people how you'll use what they say. They relax, and it's the right thing to do.
Right after the call
Give yourself five minutes before anything else. Capture:
- Who it was, and the one or two facts about them that matter for this research.
- What they do today. Their real current behavior, not their opinions about your idea.
- The exact words that stuck. Quote them as closely as you can.
- What surprised you. Surprises are usually where the learning is.
- Anything you promised to follow up on.
If you only manage one of these, take the quotes. The rest you can usually rebuild later from memory.
Leave out anything that identifies the person beyond what the research needs. A first name or "night-shift nurse" is usually enough.
Keep what they said apart from what you think
The most common mistake in interview notes is mixing observation and interpretation. "She wants a flexible planner" is your conclusion. "She said the plan dies when her week changes" is what happened.
Mark your own thoughts clearly. A simple "my guess:" in front of anything that's yours is enough. Later, when you look for patterns, you'll count what people said, not what you assumed.
Ask about the past, not the future
Notes are only as good as the questions behind them. "Would you use an app that..." gets you polite yeses. "Tell me about the last time you..." gets you what people actually do.
When someone describes a past situation, write down the details: when it happened, what they tried, what they gave up on. Those details are the evidence you'll lean on later.
Look for patterns across calls
Patterns take more than one call. After each round, read your notes in order and count:
- How many people mentioned the same problem, in their own words?
- What did nobody bring up, even though you expected them to?
- Who's the outlier, and is that person a real segment or just one loud voice?
Write the counts down. "Two of three" is easier to trust later than "users want".
Turn it into the next round
Each pattern should change what you ask next time. If two people bring up the same moment, ask the next five about that moment directly. If nobody cares about a feature you planned, ask about it once more, then let it go.
End every round with a short list: what you heard, what you'll ask next and who to talk to. Five to eight conversations per round is plenty for a small team. When the last two calls told you nothing new, the round is done.
Where Nave fits
Five minutes after a call is exactly when typing feels like a chore. Saying it out loud is quicker, and it keeps more of the person's words.
With Nave, each call becomes a note in the same thread, with a title and short summary on top of your own words. After a few calls you read the thread top to bottom and count. This invented round shows three calls starting to agree.
