User Interview & Discovery Workspace
Type: template
Stage: Stage 1: Problem Proof
Difficulty: beginner
A centralized hub to plan, schedule, and summarize discovery calls — with structured sections for consent, observation notes, and post-interview summaries.
Overview
Running 10+ problem interviews without a consistent structure means your notes are incomparable. This Notion workspace standardizes how you capture every conversation — so you can look across 10 interviews and see patterns, not just piles of text.
What the template provides
The workspace is structured around three phases of every discovery call:
• Pre-call: participant details, consent confirmation, and the specific questions you plan to ask
• During: observation notes, exact quotes, and a signal tracker (strong / weak / unclear)
• Post-call summary: the one or two most important things you learned, and what it changes about your assumptions
By using the same structure for every interview, you can sort and compare entries across all your conversations — which is where the patterns appear.
How to use it for Stage 1
Duplicate the template into your Notion workspace before your first call. Fill in the participant profile immediately after you've made contact — don't wait until the day of the interview.
During the call, use the observation notes section to write down exact quotes. Don't paraphrase. The specific words someone uses to describe their frustration are more valuable than your interpretation of them.
After each call, complete the post-interview summary within 30 minutes while the details are fresh. Note the single strongest signal from the conversation.
Spotting patterns across interviews
After five interviews, open all your post-call summaries side by side. Look for:
• The same problem described in similar language by different people
• The same workaround appearing across multiple conversations
• The same failure mode — what they tried that didn't work
If a theme appears in three or more independent interviews, you have a pattern worth building on. If nothing repeats, you either need a different audience or a different problem frame.
What good output looks like
By the end of 10 interviews, you should have:
• A list of 3–5 recurring pain phrases in your audience's own words
• A clear picture of what they're currently doing to manage the problem
• At least 5 strong signals and a clear sense of who gave them
• A first draft of your Ideal Customer Profile based on who showed the most pain
If you can't produce this from your notes, the template will tell you where the gaps are.