How I conducted a user interview

Concept

It all began with a list search on Ocado. The design of the website felt clumsy to me. I believed it could've been improved. But how? To find out, I asked users about their website experience. In particular, I was focusing on:
  • findability;
  • discoverability;
  • usability of the multisearch input (the input itself, as well as buttons and text).
What was I expecting to find out?
  • why people use list search;
  • why they don't;
  • whether they have tried using it at all;
  • what doesn't work for them (anything they would expect the search to do that it doesn't);
  • how it is being used.

Preparation

Email

My contact with the users started before the interview – I needed to find volunteers. To do so I've crafted an email explaining what is the interview going to be about, providing details and describing what one needs to be aware of in advance. The email has been sent to our internal community of volunteers.
Hi Guys!

I'm Emiliya, I'm working with the UX community. We're looking for volunteers to help test something on the Ocado website. It will be something to do with searching and shopping.

The session should take no more than 15 minutes and we plan to conduct them in the Hatfield head office.

If you are free on 12th of December between 11:00-12:00 or 15:00-16:00, please sign into the form here. We will come back to you with an allocated time and room location afterwards.

We will be asking you to login to your Ocado account. If you're not comfortable to login from my machine, please bring your own.

Thanks,
Emiliya

Script

It's important to provide an interview subject with an overview of the conversation, particularly it's purpose and format. I've put together a script to give the customer a clear introduction and help transition the conversation from greetings to the body of the interview.
Meet with the user:
  • how are you?
  • how is your day going so far?
  • which department are you from?
  • how long have you been working at Ocado?

Hi I'm Emiliya. I'm working in webshop OSP and I'm testing how people use search on Ocado.

Testing is supposed to take about 15 minutes, and the task will be based around searching products you frequently buy, on the Ocado website.

I want to encourage you to think out loud as much as possible: to say what you're looking at, what you're trying to do, and what you're thinking. This will be really helpful for us.
If you have any questions of comments during the process, just ask me. If you need to take a break at any point, just let me know.

Interview structure

The interviewees may or may not be Ocado customers and may or may not be experienced in using list search. Hence, I have built the customer journey to cater for different styles of navigating through the website.

Findings and insights

From interviewing 5 people about the list search, the findings are as follows:
… and most importantly, the key users needs were as follows:
  • trying to finish shopping as quickly as possible;
  • easily checking offers such as “Half Price”;
  • getting better search results.
This is how I decided that I want to focus on the plain search instead. That's what those needs are calling for, and there may indeed be space for improvement.
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