User interviews for everything — including written content
What these are: Say you’re working on a project of some kind. Its output could be a write-up, a website, an event, a course, etc. User interviews involve figuring out who’d use or engage with the thing you’re working on (the users), and then asking people from this group questions (and get them to show you how they use some things) to figure out things like:
How might they hear about or discover your project?
Will they be able to easily use it?
What are their actual needs? (Maybe you know that they want to start working on effective animal advocacy but are struggling. You’re interested in building a jobs board. But is that their problem? Maybe they already have a list of jobs, but don’t know which are most impactful, or they’re applying but can’t tell which are appropriate given their skillset, or they would like to develop their skills…)
Relatedly: maybe people are generally positive about your idea, but would they actually use what you’re working on?
Highlight: One mini revelation for me was that you can also do a fair amount of user interviewing for written content — even stuff like Forum posts.[1]
E.g. say you’ve got a broad topic you want to write about — maybe it’s an explainer on economic growth, but you don’t know exactly what to focus on (you don’t really know what questions people have). You can make a Notion doc with headings making points you could write out (“How economic growth relates to happiness,” “How economic growth is measured,” etc.). But don’t write those sections out. Instead, collapse them in the doc, and ask a few people from your target audience to explore it in front of you, and see what sections they uncollapse — which sections they seem interested in.
There’s a book called “Write Useful Books” which I think is primarily on stuff like this, although I haven’t read the whole thing.
Resources: I expect people who are not me will have better suggestions on what can help develop user-testing skills, but the thing that’s worked best for me so far was first sitting in on some user interviews, and then just getting through some on my own, gradually getting a bit better. I also read a bit about it. See also the page on product management, although it’s a bit sparse.
User interviews for everything — including written content
What these are: Say you’re working on a project of some kind. Its output could be a write-up, a website, an event, a course, etc. User interviews involve figuring out who’d use or engage with the thing you’re working on (the users), and then asking people from this group questions (and get them to show you how they use some things) to figure out things like:
How might they hear about or discover your project?
Will they be able to easily use it?
What are their actual needs? (Maybe you know that they want to start working on effective animal advocacy but are struggling. You’re interested in building a jobs board. But is that their problem? Maybe they already have a list of jobs, but don’t know which are most impactful, or they’re applying but can’t tell which are appropriate given their skillset, or they would like to develop their skills…)
Relatedly: maybe people are generally positive about your idea, but would they actually use what you’re working on?
See the Mom Test (here’s a video summary, or Wizard of Oz testing)
Highlight: One mini revelation for me was that you can also do a fair amount of user interviewing for written content — even stuff like Forum posts.[1]
E.g. say you’ve got a broad topic you want to write about — maybe it’s an explainer on economic growth, but you don’t know exactly what to focus on (you don’t really know what questions people have). You can make a Notion doc with headings making points you could write out (“How economic growth relates to happiness,” “How economic growth is measured,” etc.). But don’t write those sections out. Instead, collapse them in the doc, and ask a few people from your target audience to explore it in front of you, and see what sections they uncollapse — which sections they seem interested in.
There’s a book called “Write Useful Books” which I think is primarily on stuff like this, although I haven’t read the whole thing.
Resources: I expect people who are not me will have better suggestions on what can help develop user-testing skills, but the thing that’s worked best for me so far was first sitting in on some user interviews, and then just getting through some on my own, gradually getting a bit better. I also read a bit about it. See also the page on product management, although it’s a bit sparse.
I don’t always do anything like user interviews on my writing, but I’ve done it occasionally and it’s seemed to turn out well when I have.