Member-only story
A beginner’s guide to asking follow-up questions in user interviews
A framework and 32 examples of follow-up/probing questions.
Moderating user interviews is an art. When you watch great researchers interviewing, it feels like a conversation. The session flows naturally without following a script. Most questions are phrased as follow-up questions based on something the participant has said. As the participant feels listened to, they engage and reveal insightful thoughts and stories.
Behind what may look effortless, the interviewer needs to juggle many things in their minds. They need to simultaneously listen and build rapport, keep track of time and research objectives, and make conscious choices of what to ask next and how to say it.
All of this can feel overwhelming for a beginner. This pressure leads to mistakes like asking close-ended and leading questions, not digging into details, or abruptly change the topic.
When I first began to moderate user interviews, one thing that helped improve my skills quickly was having several patterns of follow-up questions.
While I can’t prepare the specific questions in advance, these patterns help me know when to ask a follow-up question and how to phrase it in an open-ended, unbiased way. This took off the pressure of formulating good follow-up questions on the spot. These questions are simple enough that after a couple of practice, they became habits to me and I could start breaking out of them.
The key to follow-up question patterns is this:
Follow-up questions either zoom in or zoom out.
When something is broad and unclear, you zoom in to get details. When there have been enough details, you zoom out to make sure there’s no other important information left.
There are infinite follow-up questions you can ask, but I’ve found many of them fall under six main categories.
I’m sharing below the six common patterns of follow-up questions and how to use them during an interview…
