Anna Hofmann·
Handed it my churn problem and it built a 45-min JTBD interview guide with probing scripts and red flags
Generate targeted interview protocols for user research, expert interviews, or stakeholder discovery with probing strategies.
Strategic Interview Protocol Builder
You are a qualitative research expert who designs interview protocols for IDEO and McKinsey. Build me a strategic interview guide.\n\nINTERVIEW PURPOSE: {{objective — e.g., 'Understand procurement decision-making process', 'Discover unmet needs in healthcare workflows'}}\nINTERVIEWEE PROFILE: {{who_you_are_interviewing — e.g., 'CIOs at mid-market manufacturing companies', 'Parents of toddlers aged 2-4'}}\nINTERVIEW TYPE: {{type — e.g., 'User research', 'Expert elicitation', 'Stakeholder discovery', 'Jobs-to-be-Done', 'Ethnographic'}}\nINTERVIEW LENGTH: {{duration — e.g., '30 min', '45 min', '60 min'}}\nNUMBER OF INTERVIEWS PLANNED: {{n}}\n\nOUTPUT — A complete Interview Protocol:\n\n## 1. INTERVIEW STRATEGY\n- Research questions this interview will answer (2-3 max)\n- Hypotheses to validate or invalidate\n- What 'good' looks like for this interview type\n- Recording and note-taking protocol\n\n## 2. INTRODUCTION SCRIPT (2 minutes)\n- Welcome and rapport-building (2-3 warm-up questions)\n- Context setting (purpose, confidentiality, recording consent)\n- Ground rules: 'There are no wrong answers', 'I'm here to learn from you'\n\n## 3. MAIN QUESTION SEQUENCE\nOrganized by thematic block with timing:\n\n**WARM-UP** [3-5 min] — Easy, factual questions to build comfort\n1. [Question] → Probe: [Follow-up strategy]\n2. [Question] → Probe: [Follow-up strategy]\n\n**CONTEXT & CURRENT STATE** [5-10 min] — Understand their world\n3. [Question] → Probe: [...]\n4. [Question] → Probe: [...]\n5. [Question] → Probe: [...]\n\n**PAIN POINTS & FRICTIONS** [5-10 min] — Identify problems and emotional intensity\n6-10. [Questions with emotion-probing follow-ups]\n\n**DECISION-MAKING & BEHAVIOR** [5-10 min] — How they act and why\n11-15. [Questions about past specific behaviors, not hypotheticals]\n\n**SOLUTIONS & VISION** [5-10 min] — Ideal states and willingness to change\n16-20. [Questions about desired outcomes and trade-off tolerance]\n\n**CLOSE** [2-3 min]\n21-22. [Wrap-up, permission to follow up, referral request]\n\n## 4. PROBING STRATEGY GUIDE\nFor the interviewer — when and how to probe:\n- The '5 Whys' approach for root cause\n- Emotional labeling ('It sounds like that was frustrating...')\n- Silence as a tool (count to 5)\n- Contrarian probes ('What would convince you this is wrong?')\n- Story elicitation ('Walk me through the last time you...')\n\n## 5. RED FLAG CHECKLIST\n- Signs the interviewee is telling you what you want to hear\n- When to pivot away from a dead-end topic\n- How to handle dominant or withdrawn interviewees\n\n## 6. SYNTHESIS TEMPLATE\n- Structured note-taking format for post-interview capture\n- Key quote capture template\n- Pattern tagging system (to use across multiple interviews)
Ergebnisse
# Interview Protocol — Why SMB Owners Churn from Our Bookkeeping App
**Interviewees:** owners of 5–20 employee service businesses who canceled in the last 90 days. **Type:** Jobs-to-be-Done. **Length:** 45 min. **Planned:** 12 interviews.
## Strategy
Answer two questions: what job did they hire us for, and what made them fire us? Record with consent; one note-taker tags quotes live.
## Introduction (2 min)
"Thanks for making time. There are no wrong answers — I'm here to learn how you run your books, not to win you back. Okay to record for my notes only?"
## Main Sequence
**Warm-up (4 min)**
1. Walk me through how you handled bookkeeping before any software. → Probe: what triggered the switch?
**Context (8 min)**
2. The week you signed up for us — what was going on in the business? → Probe: what else were you trying at the time?
**Pain points (12 min)**
3. Tell me about the last time the app frustrated you. → Probe: "What did you do next?" then sit in silence.
4. On a scale where 10 is furious — where were you? → Probe the number, not the feature.
**Decision & behavior (12 min)**
5. Walk me through the day you decided to cancel. Who was in the room? → Probe: what was the final straw?
**Vision & close (7 min)**
6. If a magic tool existed, what would the first five minutes feel like?
7. Anyone else I should talk to?
## Probing Guide
Use 5 Whys for root cause; emotional labeling ("sounds like that cost you a weekend"); story elicitation over hypotheticals.
## Red Flags
Watch for "it was fine, just too expensive" — price is usually a proxy. Re-probe for the real friction.
## Synthesis Template
Per interview: top job, switch trigger, kill trigger, 2 verbatim quotes, JTBD forces (push/pull/anxiety/habit).
Modell: Claude Sonnet 4
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1 Kommentar
Leon Wirth·
The buffer time between blocks is the detail I always skip and shouldn't.