The UX industry loves words like empathy, deep understanding, hidden needs, and human-centered design. Most of them sound good. The problem is that many have become so vague that they stop being useful. After conducting user interviews, I have become increasingly skeptical of research advice that encourages researchers to “understand what users feel” without explaining how to separate evidence from interpretation.
People are complicated. Memories are imperfect. Opinions change. Users are often surprisingly bad at predicting their own future behavior. That does not make interviews useless. It simply means we need to be more disciplined about what we are trying to learn.
The Goal Is Not To Read Minds
When I prepare an interview, I am not trying to uncover someone’s hidden psychology. I am trying to understand what happened. What did they do? What were they trying to achieve? What information did they look for? Where did they hesitate? What made the decision easier or harder? These questions generate evidence. Questions about hypothetical futures often generate speculation. There is a difference.
One of the most common pieces of UX advice is to “understand user motivations.” While that sounds sensible, it can easily push researchers toward interpretation too early. People can tell us what they remember, what they believe, and how they describe their actions. Their deeper motivations are often far less accessible than we pretend. Good interviews stay close to observable reality.
I Focus On Behavior Before Opinions
A common UX question is: “What do you think about housing websites?” The problem is that people usually answer with general beliefs, social expectations, or abstract preferences. Instead, I prefer questions such as: “Tell me about the last time you looked for a home online.” “What was the first thing you did?” “How did you compare different options?” “What information did you struggle to find?”
Now we are talking about actual events rather than theories. Behavior is often more reliable than opinion because it reflects something that already happened rather than something a participant imagines they might do in the future.
I Separate Observation From Interpretation
One of the easiest mistakes in research is turning a user’s comment into a story. A participant says, “I felt overwhelmed.” That is an observation. If I then write, “Users are overwhelmed because the navigation structure is too complex,” I have already moved into interpretation. Maybe the navigation was the problem. Maybe it wasn’t.
This distinction sounds obvious, but many research findings blur the line between what was observed and what was inferred. The more disciplined we are about separating the two, the more trustworthy our conclusions become.
I Look For Patterns, Not Quotes
Individual quotes can be powerful, but a quote is not an insight. An insight emerges when multiple people independently describe similar behaviors, frustrations, or goals. During a recent housing project, participants repeatedly talked about commute times, nearby services, neighborhood character, and future lifestyle. Very few spoke primarily about square meters or floor plans.
The insight was not that one person wanted a shorter commute. The insight was that people were evaluating future life circumstances while the platform was primarily presenting housing specifications. The pattern mattered more than any individual quote.
I Try To Kill My Assumptions
Before every interview, I write down what I believe to be true. Then I actively look for evidence that I am wrong. This is uncomfortable, but it is often where the most valuable learning happens. Research should not be a process for confirming our ideas. It should be a process for challenging them.
For me, grounded user research is surprisingly simple. It means focusing on real behavior rather than abstract opinions, separating observations from interpretations, looking for patterns across participants, and treating assumptions as hypotheses rather than facts. The goal is not to uncover hidden psychological truths. The goal is to understand enough about reality to make better design decisions.
Katze Designs 
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