All members of a founding team need to participate in user discussion, including technical founders. This process CANNOT be outsourced
Personal interviews need to be carried out most frequently in stages 0, 1, and 2. Keep interviewing until you simply have too many users to keep track of, then transition to wider-net analysis tools
Common Pitfalls To Avoid
Talk about their life, not your idea
The goal is to extract information from your interviewee, not to sell your idea
It's important to understand the entire picture of your audience, not just their problem at hand
Talk specifics, not hypotheticals
"Would you..." questions aren't honest
People are bad with hypotheticals, and tend to lie to save face
Listen, don't talk
Let the interviewee be the guide to your product
Important Questions to Ask
What is the hardest part [about the thing you do]?
Look for problems that are being faced on a regular basis or that are painful enough to warrant solving. This question can help confirm for you whether the problem that you're working on is actually a pain point, and that your interviewee feels is something that they actively want to solve in their life.
Tell me about the last time you experienced this problem?
This helps establish context for when the problem occurs
This also helps build a catalog of real-life instances where the problem occured for people, that you can then overlay with your solution
Why was it so hard?
You'll hear many different answers from many different people on this
Why a past problem was so hard can inform your messaging as you build out the rest of your product
What, if anything, have you done to solve the problem?
If potential solutions are not already being explored, it's possible that the problem you're trying to solve is not a burning enough problem to begin with. This question tries to get at the root of that issue.
This can also give you an idea of what your solution landscape looks like? What will your product be compared against as you end up rolling out your solution and offering it to your audience?
What don't you love about the solutions you've tried?
This question specifically targets, what are the problems with the existing solutions that they've already tried? These are specifics and from this, you can begin to figure out what the differential between your new solution and the existing solutions already in the market will be