How to ask the Right Questions as a Product Owner

An interview guide is what you’ll use in the main body questions portion of your interview.  Be sure to think about how to phrase non-leading questions that won’t influence the answer.  Try to ask about specific moments in the past.  We’ll use email to try and illustrate good and bad questions.  A bad example of a question to ask would be as follows:

• “How anxious do you feel when you have a large number of emails that you haven’t responded to yet?”

Vs

• “Can you tell me about the last time you felt anxious about your email inbox?  What happened and how did you feel then?”

Version one of the question is not good for a few reasons.  One you are specifically pointing to them feeling anxious when there are a large number of emails in their inbox.  News flash.  Not every single user feels anxious when they have a lot of emails in their inbox.  Some have 10,000 plus read and unread emails and live happy and full lives.  Some people may feel anxious because they have a bunch of labels that do or don’t get used.  Some may feel anxious that they have archived 10,000 emails, but just haven’t ever read them.

Version two of the question is a lot more open ended.  It isn’t specifically pointing to the large number of emails, but more about the last time they did feel anxious, which will elicit a truer picture of what their problem is/was.  This gives them more freedom to respond a more valuable way.

Another example of good vs bad questions to ask.

• “What was the last productivity app you used?”

            Vs

• “Tell me about the last time you used a productivity app.”

Lean towards asking “who, what, when, where, and why” with why being the number one question to ask.  Do not give up questioning early.  Be that annoying five year old that keeps asking why after someone has explained something to them.  Be sure to keep digging to get to the core reason why someone does or thinks something. 

Bad questions: “Would you…?  Did you…?  Is it…?”

Better way to ask this question would be:

• Why?  When?  How?  
• What’s an example of that?
• Why does this matter to you?
• Talk me through the last time that happened.
• What else have you tried?

Bad question: “Do you think this is a good idea?”

Better way to ask this question would be:

• Walk me through how you currently solve this problem.
• What parts of your current process do you love or hate?
• What other products/processes have you tried before settling on this one?
• Are you actively looking to replace this product/process?  If so, why are you still using this one?  If not, why not?

Bad question: “Would you buy a product which did X?”

Better way to ask this question would be:

• How are you currently solving X?
• How much does it cost you to do this?
• How much time does it take to do this?
• Talk through what happened the last time X came up.
• Have you tried searching for a solution to X?

Bad question: “How much would you pay for this product?”

Better way to ask this question would be:

• How much money does it cost you to solve this?
• How much time does it take to solve this?
• What is the budget you’ve allocated to solve this?

Keep asking “Why?”!  If you’re building something like a notification app that lets a teacher know if a parent’s child is going to be late or absent and you’ve got built out all these cool buttons and it is all automated, but the confirmation messages are cold and robotic the app may not get used.  To solve that problem say you add a custom message option that the parents can then use, but it still feels robotic and cold the app may not get used again.  Then you also add the teacher’s picture to each page of the app.  Asking why parents aren’t using the app or only weird parts of it would bring to the surface that you can use automation, but instead of, “Your message has been received.” you could change it to, “Thank you Jane.  We’ve let Mrs. Periwinkle know that your child be will running late.”  This way it doesn’t feel like their message goes into a black box or the ether of the internet never to be seen.

The following is a list of potential questions you could ask during your user interview.  Post the interview you’ll want to list each of these in the column headings of a spreadsheet and then each row is a user’s name and then their response would go to the right and underneath each question.

1. What are your big goals and areas of focus right now?
2. What are your big problems right now?
3. What are the implications of that problem?
4. Can you walk me through the last time this problem happened?
5. What makes it so awful?
6. How are you currently dealing with this problem?
7. How are you currently coping without a solution?
8. Why haven’t you been able to find a solution to this already?
9. What alternative solutions have you tried?
10. How might you fit a solution into your workflow?
11. How much time does it take to solve this?
12. What is the budget you’ve allocated to solve this?
13. Can you think of anything else that I should ask you about this problem?
14. Is there anyone else you would recommend I speak to about this problem?

Asking the right questions that don’t lead your respondent to biased responses that don’t reflect reality will help you develop and solve real problems that will generate revenue and increase adoption and use.  Worst case scenario is you’ve validated some problem and you go off and build a solution, but then after you realize they never had a budget to solve it in the first place.