Stop Asking Users What They Want. Ask What They Did Last Tuesday.
Questions about the future produce wishes. Questions about recent, specific moments produce evidence. Here is how to make the switch.
Early in my career, I ran an interview where I asked a participant whether she would use a feature that let her schedule reports to be emailed every Monday. She said, enthusiastically, Absolutely, I'd use that every week.
We built it. Six months later, she had never turned it on. Neither had 94 percent of users.
She was not lying. She was predicting, and people are poor predictors of their own future behaviour. I had asked the wrong kind of question.
Why future questions mislead
Questions like Would you use this? or How likely are you to try it? invite people to imagine an idealised version of themselves. That version is more organised, more motivated and has more free time than the real one. Participants also want to be helpful, and saying yes feels helpful.
The result is a pile of enthusiastic answers that do not survive contact with an actual Monday morning.
Anchor on a specific recent moment
The shift is simple: instead of asking about the future or about general habits, ask about the last time something happened.
Compare these pairs:
- Weak: How do you usually share reports with your team?
- Stronger: Think about the last report you shared. When was it? Walk me through what you did.
- Weak: Would a scheduling feature be useful?
- Stronger: Last week, was there a moment you needed to send something regularly? What did you do?
Specific moments pull out real details: the tool they actually opened, the workaround they used, the colleague they messaged, the thing that annoyed them.
Follow-up questions that dig deeper
Once someone is describing a real event, a few follow-ups do most of the work:
- What happened right before that?
- What did you do next?
- Was there anything frustrating about it?
- Is that typical, or was that time unusual?
- Can you show me? If you are remote, ask them to share their screen.
That last one is gold. Watching someone actually perform a task reveals steps they would never think to mention.
What to do with wishes anyway
Participants will still offer feature ideas. Do not shut them down. Instead, treat each wish as a clue and dig underneath it.
When someone says they want a button, ask what they were trying to do the last time they wished it existed.
Often the underlying need is different from, and more interesting than, the requested feature.
A quick self-audit
Look at your current interview guide and highlight every question containing would, could, usually or ideally. Try rewriting each one around a specific recent moment. The answers will be messier, shorter and far less flattering to your product ideas. They will also be much closer to the truth.
Cover: Photo by Hrushi Chavhan on Unsplash.
