When you’re considering where to innovate, it’s essential to ideate and build solutions that are actually solving users’ problems. Conducting interviews with said users is a great first step to uncover what some of their unsolved problems are within your area of interest

Consistently talking to users ensures that you're keeping people and their problems at the centre of your product or service, even as ideas evolve and change. Problem identification interviews help you identify a problem or validate any of the assumptions that you've based your problem statements on. They help ensure you’re building something that people will actually want and use.

A discussion guide written based on the clearly outlined goals of the interview and what you want to learn. A method of notetaking to record observations. Optional - an audio or video recording of the interview to refer back to. For more information on questions and scripts, here is the Highline Beta guide to Conducting User Interviews. Other good resources are Talking to Humans, by Giff Constable, and Running Lean, by Ash Maurya. User interviews can also be conducted using a Topic Map, you can find more information about that style here.