Learn before you pitch
Discovery conversations help you understand people’s circumstances, habits and frustrations. If you start by explaining your solution, the conversation can become a request for approval. Give the customer room to describe their experience before introducing your ideas.
Ask about a specific moment
Instead of asking whether someone would use a task-planning app, ask them to describe the last time they planned a busy week. What triggered the process? What tools did they use? Where did things become difficult? A concrete story gives you a sequence of actions to investigate.
Explore consequences and workarounds
A frustration is more useful to understand when you know its consequences. Ask what happened when the plan fell apart, how they dealt with it and what the workaround cost them in effort. Avoid assuming that a minor inconvenience deserves an entire product.
Keep evidence and interpretation separate
Record what the person said or did, then separately note what you think it means. “I update three spreadsheets each Friday” is an observation. “This customer needs automation” is an interpretation that still needs testing. Maintaining that distinction keeps the team honest about its confidence.
Use interviews as one part of the picture
Look for patterns across conversations and compare them with behavioural data, support requests or direct observation. A small set of interviews can reveal promising questions without establishing how common a problem is across the whole market.
A simple interview starting point
Ask: Tell me about the last time you did this. What made it difficult? What did you try? What happened next? What would make the biggest difference? Follow the story with curiosity rather than treating the questions as a rigid script.
Specific examples of past behaviour are a stronger starting point than praise for a proposed solution.
