How much hours do you spend on User interview of 20 respondents?

Process & Techniques
#1

Hi all!

Trying to estimate how much time will it take to conduct a remote interview with 20 users from scratch (including recruiting, analyzing results, creating presentation)
Can you share please your experience, how many hours do you spend and what is the timeframe?

My estimates for Interview of 20 professionals (Doctors) are:
Stage Time Estimate Time Frame

  • Preparatory phase - 4 hours (timeframe 1-4 days)
  • Preparing the interview questions, choosing methodology - 5 h (up to 3 days)
  • Recruiting respondents using Linkedin/userinterview.com, respondent.io - 5 hours (up to 7 days)
  • Conducting Interview/taking notes - 1.5 h per participant (30 min interview, 30-40 min note taking after the interview and transcription from foreign language to English (when needed), 20 min reserve for communication with respondent before or after interview) - 30 h in total (timeframe 7 days)
  • Analyzing the research results and creating a report - 1 h per participant (20 h) (7 days)
  • Presenting the research findings - 2h

So in total it is 70 hours of work and a timeframe of 30-40 days to deliver final results.

2 Likes
#2

Hey @cjseriy, this looks like a good plan. The only things that jump out to me are:

  • It always takes way longer to recruit people than you expect, so start as early as possible. Recruitment companies can usually do this faster but make sure you have a really good recruitment screener so you are getting the people you want.
  • This may be contentious but 20 people is a lot. I find between 8-15 is usually enough.
  • If you are conducting the interview then it will be hard for you to also take notes. In my work we try to have an interviewer and an observer who is doing the note taking. This is not always possible so transcription software can help. I have used both otter.ai and even Microsoft Teams to transcribe as I interview. They both do a pretty good job and then the only burden on you is cleaning up any mistakes. If you record an interview and then later transcribe it with Otter, the transcription takes as long as the interview in most cases.
  • Give yourself at least 15 minutes between interviews to note down your key take aways from that interview, favourite story, key quotes, pain points and opportunities.
  • I find that I spend probably 1.5 times the length of the interview (and sometimes more) on analysis, theming and insights. I also find this work can’t be forced so give yourself some thinking time. Some of my greatest insights appear in the middle of the night!
  • If you are doing a polished presentation then you might need more than 2 hours.

I hope this helps

#3

Hi Websitestory,

Thanks for your reply. Would like to clarify on your last point: " If you are doing a polished presentation then you might need more than 2 hours".

By 2 hours, did yo mean 2 hours for the entire presentation production?

Also, the 1.5 times analysis doesn’t feel enough, I review the recordings but I stop and rewind and play again, sometimes multiple times just so that I could be clear on what the interviewees were saying. I also note the time so I can make recording clips to include on the result presentation. This along will take 2 times. I think for me, 3 times would be more like it (I don’t have someone to take notes for me so maybe that’s why). In another word I can analysis 2 recordings per day productively. Somehow to me it’s exciting to run the interview, but kind of takes a lot to watch the recordings, it’s a daunting task.

Would like to hear your thoughts,

Zoe

1 Like
#4

This seems to be a good plan however recruiting the participants can take much longer as you will have schedule the call based on time zones, availability etc. I prefer to simulataneouly send out recruiting advertisement early on once the number of participants is decided. Since the interviews are remote, giving some interval between the interviews is always great. And you can utilese this time to go over the previous participants response, look into the transcription etc. Conducting interviews can be quite taxing on your mental ability hence having enough gap will not only be preductive but helps in rejuvenating.