Lesson 4 of 12: Structure
Build
Warm-up opens the door. Build walks through it, narrowing the conversation toward your hypothesis without revealing it.
The Core Technique
The Build phase asks about current workflow, existing tools, and recent domain experiences before introducing your specific feature area or product.
This serves two purposes:
- Prevents priming: if you open with "what do you think about our new lesson screen?" the participant orients their entire response around your product rather than describing how they actually try to learn
- Activates episodic memory: walking through a specific recent episode produces narratives full of the workarounds, emotions, and improvisation that constitute real user problems
Narrowing the Aperture
A good Build phase starts broad and progressively tightens:
Build progression for a Duolingo lesson-redesign interview
1
Start broad: understand their context
"How does language learning fit into your life right now? Where does it sit alongside everything else you're doing?"; establishes the frame.
You're researching a new lesson format for a language-learning app. Which is the best Build-phase question?