Well, the first thing you need to do is understand what is stakeholder. The definition goes like this “A person, group or an organization that has interest in the product or the organization.”
But what I understood from my experience, as I have worked with several IT firms is that “a stakeholder is any individual who is involved in the process of development of the product and the person who is going to use that product.”
Not all stakeholders are equal. Some stakeholders have high authority and others have low authority. For example, a company’s founder will have a high authority than a regular employee.
Also, some stakeholders will have most of the information you need…
about your users like sales department,
about technology and constraints like engineering department,
about business like product managers.
Business Requirements
Defining business requirements will help you understand the reason behind the project existence and it will lead to a definition of project vision. That vision will be the based of your decision-making and it will be used throughout the design process.
These business requirements would include…
- Product vision
- Budget
- Schedule
- Technical constraints
- Business goals
- Customers & users
- Learning about competitors
- What they are trying to achieve
- Success criteria
Preparing for the interview
The first step to any kind of research is to make your plan, it will help you to focus on your goal, focus on time & budget.
In your plan you can include the following:
1. Set up the research golas and objectives
Here you will have to conduct interviews. And identify if the interviews will help you understand your customers and identify technological constraints or help you learn about the business.
2. Identify stakeholders that you will meet
Based on your objectives and goals, you will select your stakeholders that will give you what you are really after. But don’t miss the high authority stakeholder’s point of view.
3. Identify team roles and responsibilities.
This is an essential part to agree upon with your team to make sure that all responsibilities are covered and each team member has role. Responsibilities could be taking notes, recording or interviewing.
4. Consider the materials and logistics
To avoid situations like “We’ve missed the recorder” or “Oops! The notes are not here”. You need to plan and prepare your materials and what you will need during the interviews, like papers, pens, sticky notes and audio recorders.
5. Schedule the interviews
Scheduling your interviews with stakeholders in a timetable make it easy for you to plan any other activities and avoid conflict in time slots if you are conducting a lot of interviews.
6. Calculate the budget
Calculate all the expenses that will be needed, like material to buy, travel costs or any other expenses.
7. Prepare the script
The interview script is simple, you just need to introduce yourself & your team, mention the objectives from this interview and encourage the stakeholder to talk.
8. Build the field guide
The field guide is a set of questions that you will ask the stakeholder.
Here is a set of questions you can ask:
- What is your role in this project?
- Who is your product for?
- What is the product supposed to be?
- How will the product success be measured?
- What are the goals you need to achieve from this project?
- How do you want people to see your brand?
- What is unique about your organization?
- Who are the biggest competitors and what worries you about them?
- How do you expect to differentiate this project?
- How large is the engineering team assigned to this project, and what are their skills?
- Could you draw a diagram and tell me in lay terms how the existing system works?
- Who is typically involved in the purchase decision?
- Why do customers buy a product like this one, and why this one over a competitor’s?
- What things do customers complain about or ask most often and why?
- What are the most common problems your users face?
Conducting the interviews
The third step is to start the real work, you are now ready with all the needed tools to conduct successful interview with your stakeholders.
1. Crossing the threshold
Your stakeholders are not 100 percent clear on what’s expected of them, some of they may your name and your company and some of them doesn’t know anything, they are just told that they will meet you to talk about the project. Just introduce yourself, your team and the company. Also arrange the seat so that you and your fellow interviewers are near each other. In order to maximize the engagement among all parties.
2. Restating Objective
Thank the stakeholders for their time and start explaining why you are here and what are the objectives of this interview. It will also be great to tell the stakeholder about the agenda for the meeting.
3. Accept the awkwardness
Not all people are the same, some stakeholders may be sociable and start telling stories and others may show some resistance. Be patient and keep asking the questions and keep accepting, acknowledging and appreciating their responses.
4. The tipping point
You will get there when people shift from short answers and responses to stories and long answers. In this stage you will get lot of insights and very useful information, you may keep your most important questions for this stage.
5. Reflection and projection
At this point, stakeholder has been immersed in the topic and built a good rapport with you. It’s your chance to benefit from this and asks him about the future, his predictions and his dream goals for the products.
6. The soft close
At some point you need to end the interview. Keep your eyes and brain in interview mode until you are fully departed. At this moment a crucial information is revealed just as the patient is about to depart.
Including the Activities
1. Requirements Workshops
A collaborative method for developing your project brief. You gather the stakeholders to discuss the brief, do exercises designed to get you a clear understanding of the project. This workshop leads to shared understanding of your project and the problems it aims to solve. This activity also helps you building a sense of teamwork with your client.
2. Crazy 8’s
A brainstorm exercise to find trends and preferences. Get everyone to sketch 8 product ideas or features in 5 minutes. Then have everyone score each idea, the result will let you see trends and preference.
3. Empathy Map
This exercise tells you how the product makes customers feel and what & what should they do? It records how stakeholder and customer will think, feel and do. You set a standard to compare against usability testing and user analysis.
What user will say?
What users will think?
What users will do?
What user will feel?
What problem does it solve?
What are the reasons?
What are the user needs?
Documenting the findings
As this information will be used in all stages of the project, you need to document it for yourself and your team or anybody involved in the project. You will also need to keep all the audio recordings, transcript and photos of your notes.
Conclusion
Stakeholder interviews aren’t just another step in the design process—they’re an opportunity to align goals, gather insights, and build strong relationships. These conversations play a critical role in uncovering key information that shapes the direction of a project. By asking meaningful questions, listening carefully, and fostering open dialogue, you create a shared understanding that benefits both the team and the users. When done well, stakeholder interviews lay the groundwork for successful collaboration and thoughtful, impactful design outcomes.