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Writing the interview script

What it is

An interview script is a guide you write once and use unchanged across a study: an opening that sets expectations without revealing the hypothesis, a warm-up that gets a concrete story, a middle that digs into the situation and the alternatives, and a close. It is a script for you, not a questionnaire for them.

Why it matters

Consistency is what makes six interviews comparable. If the wording drifts — a friendlier warm-up here, a sharper prompt there — you cannot tell an honest difference between participants from a difference in your questions. A written script also frees your attention: while they talk you can listen for the detail worth following up, instead of composing the next question.

Core ideas

Open with the situation, not the product

Start with the last time the thing happened, then work backwards. “Tell me about the last time you had to reorder something” produces a story; “do you reorder often?” produces a yes.

Warm-up (3 prompts, in order)
1. Tell me about the last time <task> came up.
2. What was going on that day?
3. What did you do first?

Script the prompts, not the questions

Write the wording you will say, because wording decides the answer. Keep each under fifteen words and avoid the words that lead: “easy”, “difficult”, “helpful”, “problem”.

Funnel from broad to specific

Begin with the overall story and narrow as the participant’s own account supplies the threads. Specific questions asked too early anchor the conversation on your assumptions.

Ask for a walkthrough of one instance

One episode in detail beats a general opinion. Ask them to walk through the last time, step by step, including what they touched and who else was involved.

Close by handing over the floor

End with “what should I have asked you?” and “anything you want to add?”. The last two minutes frequently produce the most useful sentence of the session.

Practice

Write and pilot one script

Write the four parts of a script for your own question, then run it with a colleague who matches the participant profile. Mark every place you improvised.

Done when: your colleague can say what the session was about without you telling them, and you have a revised script in which the improvised questions are written down.

Run the script three times unchanged

Use the same script, in the same order, for three sessions. Note where each participant needed a different follow-up.

Done when: you can point at the two prompts that produced the best stories and the one that fell flat every time.

Common mistakes

  • Leading vocabulary — “was that easy?” invites agreement; fix: ask what happened and how long it took instead.
  • Revealing the hypothesis in the warm-up — the participant spends the hour confirming it; fix: state the topic, never the belief being tested.
  • Reading questions like a survey — the conversation stops being a conversation and the useful detail never surfaces; fix: script the prompts but let the order follow the participant.
  • Interrupting a good story to reach the next question — the script is there to serve the interview; fix: let the story finish and drop a later prompt if time runs out.
  • Skipping the close — the two best sentences go unasked; fix: always leave five minutes for the open close.

Go deeper

Worked examples

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