User research guides
Methods for AI-moderated user interviews, complete playbooks for common research questions, and copy-ready interview guides and templates.
Getting started
What AI-moderated user interviews are, and how to choose research methods and tools.
What is an AI-moderated user interview?
What AI-moderated user interviews are, how they work, how they differ from surveys and traditional interviews, which studies they suit, the steps in a study, how to judge interview quality, and their limitations and risks.
Read moreHow to choose an AI user research tool
How to choose an AI user research tool across nine areas: follow-up questions, quote traceability, human review, participant sourcing, multiple languages, data security, behavior data, Agent access, and pricing. Each comes with ways to test it in a trial, plus an evaluation checklist and scorecard.
Read moreWhat is user research? Methods, process, and common mistakes
What user research is, what types of questions it can answer, what common methods such as interviews, usability testing, surveys, and A/B testing are each suited for, how to run a study, when you don't need one, and the mistakes beginners often make.
Read moreQualitative vs. quantitative research: how to use them together
The definitions of qualitative and quantitative research and how they differ, what questions each answers best, three common ways to combine them, how to use behavior data to find a problem and interviews to find out why, and how far each kind of finding generalizes.
Read moreAI interviews, surveys, or traditional interviews: Which to use
How the three methods differ, and which questions suit each one.
Read moreHow AI user interviews work, and why you can trust the findings
How heari handles each step from research design and interviews to analysis and reporting, and where people stay in control.
Read moreMethod
Get every step of an interview study right: the interview guide, follow-up questions, sample size, recruiting, and synthesis.
How to write a user interview guide: structure and template
Go from business question to research questions to interview questions. Covers the five sections of an interview guide, must-ask vs. optional questions, timing, and pilot checks, with a ready-to-use user interview template.
Read more8 follow-up question techniques for user interviews
Most of the valuable information in user interviews comes from follow-up questions. This article covers 8 follow-up techniques, each with ready-to-use phrasing and a short example, plus a follow-up question cheat sheet and common mistakes.
Read moreHow to avoid leading questions: types and rewrites
Leading questions push participants to answer along the lines of your assumptions and distort your findings. This article covers common types such as assumed answers, double-barreled questions, and loaded words, with a before-and-after table and a question checklist.
Read moreHow many user interviews are enough?
How to decide how many user interviews you need: thematic saturation and Guest et al. (2006), where the 5-user rule for usability testing applies, how many participants per segment, when to add participants or stop, and what AI interviews change and don't.
Read moreHow to recruit participants for user interviews
Where to find user interview participants and how to screen them: your own users vs. external recruiting, screening by behavior, writing a screener, five invitation channels, setting incentives, avoiding a sample of only enthusiastic users, and compliance and informed consent.
Read moreHow to synthesize user interviews into findings
How to synthesize user interviews from quotes to findings: coding, themes, and affinity diagrams; writing each finding with a participant count, representative quotes, and counterexamples; separating facts, interpretations, and recommendations; prioritizing actions; and avoiding overgeneralization and confirmation bias.
Read morePlaybooks
Complete research plans and copy-ready interview guides for common business questions.
How to do churn research: finding out why users leave
A complete guide to churn research: separate early churn, lapsed users and cancellations, select participants by behavior, start from the last use, and use the copy-ready interview guide, sample dialogue, synthesis method and steps for validating with behavior data.
Read moreHow to run concept testing for new products and features
How to run concept testing for new products and features: preparing concept materials, choosing between single-concept and multi-concept tests, asking for first reactions before probing, asking about purchase intent without inflating it, and keeping participants from telling you what you want to hear. Includes an interview guide and sample dialogue.
Read moreHow to find out why customers give low NPS scores
Open-ended survey questions rarely reveal the reasons behind low NPS scores. This guide covers how to select participants, the four steps for following up on low scores, a copy-ready interview guide and sample dialogue, and how to group causes and validate them with behavior data.
Read moreHow to research willingness to pay and purchase decisions
How to research willingness to pay: why you can't just ask how much people would pay, how to start from the last purchase decision, when to pair interviews with Van Westendorp and Gabor-Granger, and how to separate price concerns from value concerns.
Read moreUser segmentation and personas from interviews
Segmenting by age and city doesn't tell you why users make their choices. This guide shows how to use interviews to segment users by goals, motivations and decision process, with an interview guide, a persona card template and a method for testing segments against behavior data.
Read moreHow to run ad testing and brand message testing
Ad testing should find out what audiences remembered, how they understood it and what they misunderstood, not whether they liked it. This guide covers how to choose between pre-tests and post-tests, an interview guide that moves from unaided to aided recall, how to synthesize findings and how to validate them with data.
Read moreTemplates and glossary
Copy-ready templates and common user research terms.
User interview templates: interview guide, invitations, and consent form
Copy-ready user interview templates: a general interview guide, a one-page research plan, participant invitations (email and SMS), an informed consent form, a post-interview thank-you message, and a findings template.
Read moreUser research glossary
A user research glossary of common user research and AI interview terms, with clear definitions, organized into five groups: research methods, interviews and guides, analysis and reporting, metrics and data, and AI interviews. Each entry gives a complete definition you can quote on its own.
Read moreUser interview questions: 100 questions by scenario
A user interview question bank organized by scenario: 11 groups of open-ended questions covering opening, usage habits, onboarding, churn, needs, concepts, pricing, purchase decisions, satisfaction, brand, and more, with common follow-up questions and how to use them.
Read moreStart a pilot study with your own business question
Tell us the business question you most want answered, and we'll run a pilot study with you in heari.
