By sitting down with people and interviewing them, you will likely learn a lot about both your problem and your users. The focus here is to understand the motivations and needs of each potential user you talk to and to use that feedback to improve the product.

Ideally, you'll want to have both an interviewer and observer present during the interview. While the interviewer communicates with the user, the observer would take notes.

Some good practices for a fruitful interview include encouraging participants to share their past experiences as well as their current needs and challenges. Ask them how they've tried to solve this particular problem in the past and what was the outcome. Talking about this from a personal point of view allows participants to reveal their feelings, which should give you better insight into their motivations and help you to empathize with their needs.

Also, avoid asking people what they want. It's often difficult for people to share exactly what they want. It's easier for them to tell you what they're trying to achieve and for you to ask about their motivations behind this. Uncovering this information enables you to gauge whether your product idea addresses that particular need or whether you need to tweak it slightly to solve a more pressing problem.

Another damper on user interviews is leading or suggestive questions. These are questions peppered with the interviewer's assumptions, which could lead to false results. Keep the questions unbiased and open-ended - so, "What's your impression of using feature X?" instead of "How easy was it to use feature X to navigate?". We've compiled more helpful pointers on best practices for user interviews.