User research for a product users have never used

I am designing a health tracker app for the users in my organisation and I am planning to interview users in order to understand them more.

However, these users have never used such an application before. In such case, what kind of questions should I ask them in order to understand their goals, behaviors and preferences?

Answer

I am lazy and this has been done before, so I highly encourage you to read this: http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/dsummer/handouts/NeedFinding.pdf

I think it answers all your questions.

To summarize:

Find your users: the average user, the extreme user, the casual user, the expert on the subject ...

Ask questions:

• Be as open-ended as possible


• Let the people educate you:


• Ask people for comparisons instead of evaluating on an absolute scale


• Avoid personal bias, because people are not very good at self reporting


• Be concrete

Good examples:

• “I don’t really understand coffee chemistry. As a food chemist, can you explain to me how coffee ‘works’?”


• "How much did you exercice this week?"

Bad examples:

• "Is the daily update an important feature to you?"


• "Would you like something more intuitive?"


• "How often do you exercice?"