How to ask better questions when talking to users

Talking to users is not enough: you need to ask good questions that elicit non-biased answers from them. Most of the time you should refrain from asking closed questions that would yield yes/no type of answers. If you're not asking open-ended and non-leading questions, you will most likely get misleading and confusing answers back. In turn this means you are not uncovering at a deeper level the real problems users face. As a result you could waste a lot of time working on things that were not needed by your users. I now follow common-sense guidelines recommended by many people within the field of UX Research. This is why I recommend using discussion guides to carry out more productive user interviews and even sales calls. Fortunately, you do not need to be a UX Researcher to employ these techniques: anyone regularly talking to customers should use a discussion guide. Early stage founders would greatly benefit from this — trust me, I’ve been there. I've written a more in-depth post about discussion guides here for any who wants to learn more: https://www.envsion.io/blog/how-to-write-a-discussion-guide-for-impactful-user-interviews