📝In product discovery interview, ask customers to share stories

source

Torres₂₀₂₁ p.79

When running customer/product interviews, instead of asking direct questions (how customer makes decision, what is important in the product, etc.), ask them to tell a story of a recent instance in detail.

People are pretty bad at explaining and generalizing their own behavior. They are rarely stumbled and can always confidently explain their behavior and decision making process but the explanation is rarely true. It’s biased by our self-image.

Memories about recent instances of activity are more reliable that asking for rationalizations/generalizations.

If the customer goes into generalizations (“I always do …”, “I usually do …”), return them to the story and ask them if that happened in this specific instance.