User Interview Template: Free Discussion Guide Template for UX Researchers

A user interview template should include a session details block, an opening script to set expectations and get consent, warm-up questions to establish context, core research questions tied to your study goal, follow-up probes for deeper exploration, a closing section, and a post-session notes area. The structure keeps sessions consistent across participants so your data is easier to compare and synthesize.

Most user interviews run 45 to 60 minutes and work best with 5 to 8 core questions. Open-ended questions generate long answers. Trying to cover 15 to 20 questions usually means skimming the surface on everything. Fewer, deeper questions give you more usable data.

A user interview focuses on understanding behaviors, motivations, and context through open-ended conversation. A usability test gives participants specific tasks to complete with a product and observes where they succeed or struggle. Interviews are better for discovery research. Usability tests are better for evaluating a specific design or flow.

Record the session and use lightweight in-session notes rather than trying to capture everything verbatim. Flag timestamps for key moments and strong quotes. After the session, use the recording to fill the gaps. Looppanel auto-transcribes recordings so you can search the full conversation instead of relying on your notes alone.

For qualitative research, 5 to 8 participants per distinct user segment is the widely cited threshold for reaching thematic saturation. If you are researching multiple user types, plan for 5 to 8 per segment. For generative discovery work, starting with 5 and assessing patterns before recruiting more is a practical approach.

Thematic analysis is the most common method. After transcribing your sessions, you tag observations and quotes into themes, group related tags together, and look for patterns across participants. Looppanel speeds up the process by letting you tag themes with AI and surface patterns across multiple sessions from the tag view within minutes.

Yes, whenever participants consent to it. Recordings give you exact quotes, let you catch moments your notes missed, and let you share clips with stakeholders who were not in the session. Written notes alone introduce interpretation errors and make it harder to go back and verify what was actually said. Also, with Looppanel Notetaker, you can bookmark important moments followed by AI notes pulled for this user-interview question guide.