Write user research questions with prompts and uxGPT Research Questions
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How many of us have gone into user interviews unprepared for what we would ask, or other participants have asked something totally outside the lines?
Yes. All of us.
Now we can start from a better foundation with ChatGPT.
Writing user research questions is one of the most effective ways I have used the application as a starter method. You can save time by quickly generating well-crafted questions without spending hours by using OpenAI’s vast amount of training data.
ChatGPT also aligns with best practices in user research. Participants can avoid common pitfalls and most biases, resulting more information to ask better questions. The truth is that when you use OpenAI, there’s always going to be some biases, but that’s correctable with a human in the loop reviewing the draft.
It may feel like having another seasoned UX professional on hand, ready to help you craft questions that get to the heart of user needs and behaviors, all while saving you precious time.
Most of the teams I have managed shared research duties with product managers. This was always time-consuming and lacked alignment, but now, not so much.
These are tips for writing user research question prompts. Most of this is focused on B2B, but you can play with B2C if you change the focus.
Start wide
Begin by declaring the category you want to research or the areas you want to compare across competitors. I recommend starting with a specific category.
It’s a good idea to set the context of your research so that you can refine it with deeper analysis and track your journey. To show the answer, you can specify any context, including the number of results or the display form.
We’ll start with our example, customer relationship management.
Prompt
Create 10 user research questions about customer relationship management systems.
Refine
Focusing on specific features allows you to dig deeper into the user’s actual experiences and pain points. This will uncover detailed insights about what works well and what doesn’t, which helps with prioritization and pattern matching on specific needs.
This will also help you gather precise feedback rather than broad, generalized opinions. Ultimately, it leads to a more user-centered product development process.
Asking very general questions for larger systems is too broad, especially if you have a system in place. Let’s focus on one goal for the feature set — managing multiple accounts. This is really typical use case for customer relationship management.
Prompt
Create 10 user research questions about managing multiple accounts using customer relationship management systems.
Add protopersonas
Now let’s go another step — adding a protopersona.
Protopersonas ensure that your questions are targeted and relevant, uncovering insights that might be overlooked with a generic approach of looking at all users in the system.
By tailoring questions to specific personas, you can gather more actionable feedback during user interviews because you’re suggesting a specific role when using the application.
For the record, I’m calling them protopersonas intentionally because they don’t take the place of talking to users, just formulating questions you may want to ask so you can refine. You can upload a persona from our list of users that we focus on. I won’t cover this during this tutorial, but it is something that you can play with at this point to inform your questions.
We’ll add a business development representative for this example.
Prompt
Create 10 user research questions about managing multiple accounts as a business development representative using customer relationship management systems.
Refine more
Focusing on a specific protopersona with a specific goal is even better because it ensures insights gathered are deeply relevant to specific tasks the user may need to complete.
The more specific you get about the request, the more it helps narrow down the request. Honing in can uncover nuanced and very specific pain points that might otherwise be overlooked.
However sometimes you don’t want to get too specific because you want to explore. I like keeping it open myself because then it might catch something I missed, and it’s a great way to learn how to craft better prompts.
We’ll add a business development representative that manages multiple accounts.
Prompt
Create 10 user research questions about managing multiple accounts as a business development representative focusing on generating more qualified leads using customer relationship management systems.
Test the questions
This doesn’t replace users, but it gives a bit of a sniff test if the questions make sense. This is crucial because it helps ensure clarity and comprehensibility for participants. provide context and detail, making the questions easier to understand and answer accurately.
This can reveal potential ambiguities, leading to improved question design. Additionally, if you edit the draft questions, you can paste them back in and ask for the answers using a different prompt.
Sample questions prompt
Create 10 user research questions about managing multiple accounts as a business development representative focusing on generating more qualified leads using customer relationship management systems. Give three detailed example answers to each question.
Sample answers prompt
Create three sample answers about managing multiple accounts as a business development representative focusing on generating more qualified leads using customer relationship management systems from entered content.
Try out this Custom GPT — uxGPT Research Questions
Don’t want to do the work yourself? Not a problem. I’ve done a lot of the legwork for you.
Try this custom GPT at uxGPT Research Questions.