What are stakeholder interviews?
Stakeholder interviews are used by UX practitioners to understand the expectations and measures of success for the business. They allow us to inquire about specific aspects of an upcoming user experience initiative to get a deep understanding and to clarify areas which may have been cloudy.
Usually stakeholder interviews cover a range topics which could include: business context, challenges/problems, audiences, products/services, brand, content, features, analytics, key performance indicators, future state, current state, publishing process, etc.
Why do we need stakeholder interviews?
Many times the ask from a business perspective is concise and missing details which would need to be inferred. Business stakeholders are focused on defining overarching outcomes that they are looking to achieve. Sometimes they will also have a specific solution in mind, but more often than not, this solution is limited by their understanding of digital experiences. Also by jumping straight to the solution the problem is not well understood by those seeking to design an experience to alleviate it.
By interviewing stakeholders valuable insights can be identified, which will improve the likelihood of achieving the desired future outcome and ensuring alignment with business needs. Stakeholder interviews reduce the amount of assumptions involved in planning a solution for a digital experience. Through the process of conducting stakeholder interviews, we can distill problem framing, requirements and measures of success. These data points can then be validated with stakeholders to ensure alignment and accuracy.