Exercises: Module 02 — User Research and Discovery¶

Instructions¶

Complete each exercise in order. Exercises increase in difficulty. These exercises require you to practice interviewing techniques, apply JTBD framing, and build opportunity solution trees.

Easy Exercises (1–3)¶

Exercise 1¶

Difficulty: Easy Objective: Identify leading vs. non-leading interview questions

For each question below, classify it as Leading, Hypothetical, or Good and explain why. Then rewrite the leading and hypothetical questions as better alternatives.

a. "Would you use a feature that automatically syncs your calendar with your task list?" b. "Don't you find it frustrating when you can't find a file quickly?" c. "Tell me about the last time you needed to share a document with someone outside your company. What happened?" d. "How often do you feel overwhelmed by your inbox?" e. "Walk me through what you were doing last Tuesday afternoon when you needed to make a decision quickly."

Exercise 2¶

Difficulty: Easy Objective: Identify the three layers of a Job-to-be-Done

For each job statement below, identify the functional, emotional, and social dimensions:

a. "Help me stay on top of my team's progress so I can speak confidently in executive reviews without getting caught off guard."

b. "Let me close this support ticket quickly at the end of a long day so I can feel like I actually accomplished something meaningful today."

c. "Help me track my training runs in a way I can share with my running club so they see I'm taking my fitness seriously."

Exercise 3¶

Difficulty: Easy Objective: Write a basic opportunity solution tree

A product team has identified this outcome: "Increase the percentage of new users who complete their first meaningful action within 7 days."

After 5 user interviews, they've identified these opportunities: 1. New users don't know what the "first meaningful action" is 2. New users feel intimidated by the number of features visible on first login 3. New users who imported data from a competitor get stuck because the data formats don't match

Sketch an opportunity solution tree with this outcome at the root, these three opportunities as branches, and at least 2 solution hypotheses for each opportunity. Format as a list or diagram — your choice.

Medium Exercises (4–6)¶

Exercise 4¶

Difficulty: Medium Objective: Design a complete interview guide

You are researching how individual freelancers manage their finances (invoicing, tax tracking, expense tracking). Write a complete 30-minute interview guide that covers: - A warm-up question - At least 4 behavior-focused questions about past experiences - At least 3 probing follow-up questions you would ask in response to common answers - One wrap-up question

Your guide should aim to uncover the underlying job, not to elicit feature requests.

Exercise 5¶

Difficulty: Medium Objective: Synthesize multiple interview findings into JTBD

Below are brief summaries of 4 user interviews about a project management tool. Synthesize these into 2–3 distinct Jobs-to-be-Done statements:

Interview 1 (Marketing Manager): Uses the tool primarily to track campaign deliverables. Main frustration: "My boss always asks for status updates at random times and I never have the info ready." Main goal: "Look on top of things in front of leadership."

Interview 2 (Software Engineer): Uses the tool to track their own tasks. Main frustration: "I spend too much time updating tickets instead of writing code." Main goal: "Know what I need to do today without admin overhead."

Interview 3 (Operations Lead): Manages a team of 8. Main frustration: "I can't tell who's blocked until someone tells me, by which point the delay has already happened." Main goal: "Spot problems before they become escalations."

Interview 4 (Freelancer): Uses the tool to manage client projects. Main frustration: "I forget to invoice people because I lose track of when work was delivered." Main goal: "Get paid on time without tracking things manually."

Exercise 6¶

Difficulty: Medium Objective: Evaluate a continuous discovery implementation

A product team says: "We do continuous discovery. Every quarter, we run a round of user interviews — about 20 interviews over 2 weeks, led by our UX researcher, and then we present the findings to the team in a big readout meeting."

Identify at least three things about this approach that deviate from the continuous discovery habits model. For each, explain what the correct practice looks like and why it matters.

Hard Exercises (7–8)¶

Exercise 7¶

Difficulty: Hard Objective: Conduct and document a real user interview

Conduct a real 20–30 minute user interview with someone who uses a product you're interested in researching. (This can be a product you use yourself, as long as your interviewee is a different person.)

Before: Write your interview guide. During: Take notes on what they say, not what you want to hear. After: Write a 300–400 word summary that answers: - What job is this person trying to get done? - What is their current behavior (how do they do it today)? - What is their biggest frustration? - What surprised you most about the conversation? - What assumption you had going in was confirmed? What was challenged?

Exercise 8¶

Difficulty: Hard Objective: Build a complete opportunity solution tree from research

Using the interview findings from Exercise 7 (or from 3 imaginary interviews you synthesize), build a complete opportunity solution tree that includes: - One product outcome at the root - At least 3 user opportunities (from your research, not invented) - At least 2 solution hypotheses per opportunity - At least 1 experiment idea per solution (how you'd test it cheaply before building)

Annotate each opportunity with which interview(s) surfaced it.

Expert Exercise (9)¶

Difficulty: Expert Objective: Design a continuous discovery system

Design a continuous discovery practice for a real or hypothetical product team of 5 people (1 PM, 1 designer, 3 engineers). Your design should cover:

1. Recruiting: How will you find and recruit interview participants each week without spending 5+ hours on it?
2. Interview protocol: What does a 25-minute weekly interview cover? What's the standard discussion guide?
3. Synthesis: How does the team synthesize findings quickly enough that insights inform the current sprint?
4. Tree maintenance: How does the opportunity solution tree get updated? Who owns it? How often?
5. Assumptions: What are the 3 biggest assumptions your system makes, and how would you know if they're wrong?

Your design should be realistic — something a real team could actually implement, not an idealized process that only works in perfect conditions.