Interview
An interview is a structured or semi-structured conversation in which questions elicit information about a participant’s experiences, views, needs, qualifications, or requirements.
Collaborative Software Design: How to facilitate domain modeling decisions
An interview is a structured conversation in which one person elicits information, experiences, or perspectives from another person.
- How it is used
- Uses private conversations to prepare collaborative modeling, understand resistance, and inform conflict interventions.
- How deep it goes
- Explains interview use through observation, active listening, repeated conversations, and translating findings into session design.
- Examples
- Uses separate developer interviews, conversations with quiet teammates, and resistance from a back-office leader.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose/debug with it: assess conflict signals and choose preparation or intervention for collaborative sessions.
Design for Developers
A user interview is a one-on-one research conversation that explores a user’s behavior, attitudes, beliefs, needs, or experiences.
- How it is used
- Validates user needs, static designs, and user flows through one-on-one feedback conversations.
- How deep it goes
- Explains goal-setting, open questions, follow-ups, participant count, scripts, task walkthroughs, and recording, without prescribing formal analysis methods.
- Examples
- Uses ice-cream-sundae preparation and task walkthroughs on mock-ups to elicit process and design feedback.
- What you can do after
- Apply interviews to gather actionable feedback on product behavior, visual design, navigation, and task completion.
Tech Startup Toolkit
An interview is a structured conversation in which an organization evaluates a candidate's qualifications, behavior, or fit for a role.
- How it is used
- Uses interviews to assess startup candidates and to learn whether customers will pay for an MVP.
- How deep it goes
- Details six hiring-interview roles and day-of procedures, while acknowledging that interviews cannot accurately simulate real work.
- Examples
- Illustrates interview practice through résumé review, yellow and red flags, paired interviewers, lighthouse customers, and forty customer interviews.
- What you can do after
- Operate/configure it by assigning interview roles, scheduling a candidate day, escalating flags, and using customer conversations to shape product decisions.
Grokking Relational Database Design
An interview is a structured conversation for eliciting information from people about their work, requirements, or practices.
- How it is used
- Uses structured conversations to gather database requirements from people involved in business, data-management, and technical work.
- How deep it goes
- Explains preparation, interviewee grouping, question design, findings to capture, and when demonstrations or data samples are needed.
- Examples
- Uses an inventory spreadsheet, purchasing workflow, product records, stakeholder questions, and SME process demonstrations.
- What you can do after
- Apply interviews to identify database subjects, characteristics, relationships, workflows, goals, reports, and data-quality checks.
Read how Grokking Relational Database Design explains interview →
Everyday Data Visualization
A structured conversation conducted to learn a person's needs, experiences, knowledge, or opinions.
- How it is used
- Positions interviews as research that feeds requirements gathering for a visualization project.
- How deep it goes
- Gives practical setup, rapport, note-taking, and data-literacy guidance without detailing later interview stages.
- Examples
- Uses reports and apps as literacy prompts, plus internal and customer-facing dashboard scenarios.
- What you can do after
- Apply recorded conversations to identify users’ data-literacy starting point and inform requirements.
Effective Platform Engineering
An interview is a guided conversation for collecting detailed information about a person’s experiences, views, needs, or problems.
- How it is used
- Uses guided conversations to uncover developer experience, usability problems, and platform needs that quantitative metrics may miss.
- How deep it goes
- Explains interviews through participants, purposes, and feedback-loop integration, but does not specify questioning protocols or analysis procedures.
- Examples
- Uses one-on-one and group interviews with developers, team leads, and operations personnel to investigate frustration, documentation, and workflows.
- What you can do after
- Apply interviews to diagnose platform problems and inform improvements aligned with user needs, adoption, and satisfaction.
Read how Effective Platform Engineering explains interview →
Lead Developer Career Guide
A formal or semi-formal conversation conducted to gather information from a participant.
- How it is used
- Uses end-user conversations to inform software design, feature prioritization, and development.
- How deep it goes
- Distinguishes four interview formats and describes when each is useful.
- Examples
- Contrasts internal B2B users reachable directly with B2C SaaS users too numerous for individual contact.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate user needs and preferences to guide design decisions and feature priorities.
Related concepts
- researchused by · Research is the systematic investigation of a subject through gathering and evaluating information or evidence to develop understanding or answer questions.
- continuous improvementpart of · Continuous improvement is an ongoing process of evaluating outcomes and making successive changes to improve a system, process, or result.
- requirements analysispart of · Requirements analysis is the systematic process of eliciting, clarifying, assessing, and documenting the needs and constraints a system or product must satisfy.
- unstructured conversationincludes · An unstructured conversation is an open-ended, exploratory discussion guided by participants and observations rather than predetermined questions or a fixed sequence.
- feedbackproduces · Feedback is information about an action, system, or outcome that can inform evaluation, decisions, or subsequent behavior.
These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.