Hey Warrior,

Talking to your users is one of the most important things you can do as an entrepreneur. You need to understand them to build a good product.

The problem is that almost everyone talks to users in the wrong way.

They use the wrong questions and as a result, it's almost like they didn't do the interview at all. Or worse, they get false information which leads them down the wrong path.

There's a great book called "The Mom Test," that teaches you how to ask the right questions in user interviews. And today, we'll be using its principles, combined with the power of AI, to transform your bad interview questions into questions that actually give you real insights.

Today you'll learn:

• Why you have to be really careful what questions you ask in user interviews

• What the "Mom Test" Prompt is

• How to use the prompt to turn bad user interview questions into great ones

Let's jump in!

Read time: 5 minutes

🧠 Why Asking the Right Questions in User Interviews is Crucial

Before I started writing about AI, I was a product manager. As a product manager, one of your most important tasks is to talk to users and deeply understand what they need. So you would think that I should have been an expert at talking to users, right?

Wrong…

It wasn't until I read the book "The Mom Test" later on, that I realized how wrong I had been doing things all these years.

The thing is, most people talk to users in the wrong way because we tend to naturally ask forward-looking or opinion-seeking questions like:

• "What do you think of my product?"

• "Would you buy my product?"

But doing that just leads to:

• Users ‘lying’ to you because everyone just wants to be nice (that’s why it’s called ‘The Mom Test’ because your mom will always tell you your product is great, even if it's terrible).

• Users giving you their opinion, which is worthless because it's just an opinion and not a fact.

• You being led astray, believing faulty things, and building the wrong product

Instead, you should be avoiding these kind of questions and only ask questions that collect tangible behaviors and actions that really happened in the past.

This way, you'll finally be able to get accurate answers from your users.

By using the prompt I’m about to share with you, you will:

• Start asking about facts from the past instead of forward-looking questions

• Inquire about user’s past behaviors instead of asking opinion-seeking questions

• Finally getting tangible data you can use to inform your product decisions

Sound good?

Then let's get into the prompt.

🤖 The “Mom Test” Prompt

This prompt will take the principles of "The Mom Test" and turn your bad user interview questions into good ones. Specifically, it will:

• Ask you for your questions to paste

• Suggest up to 10 questions if you don't have any questions yet

• Turn your forward-looking or opinion-seeking questions into questions that focus on past behaviors

Here's the prompt:

Your task is to take a set of user interview questions provided by the user and rewrite them to adhere to the principles of the "Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick. The key idea behind the Mom Test is to ask questions that focus on collecting tangible data about the user's past behaviors and real actions, rather than asking about opinions or forward-looking statements.

Here are the steps to follow:
1. Ask the user to paste their initial set of interview questions or if the user does not have any questions yet, ask them for some context about their product. Then suggest up to 10 questions that adhere to the Mom Test principles. Focus on questions that uncover past behaviors, actions, and experiences related to the product or problem space.
2. If the user has provided questions, analyze each question and determine if it follows the Mom Test principles.
3. For each question that does not adhere to the Mom Test:
<thinking>
- Identify if the question asks for opinions, hypotheticals, or forward-looking statements
- Rewrite the question to focus on past behaviors, actions, or experiences
- Ensure the rewritten question is open-ended and encourages the user to share specific, concrete examples
</thinking>
4. If there are any gaps in the question set that would be useful to uncover additional insights, suggest additional Mom Test-compliant questions.
5. Provide the rewritten questions and any additional suggested questions inside <rewritten_questions> tags.

Remember, the goal is to help the user craft interview questions that will yield valuable, actionable insights by focusing on the user's past experiences and behaviors, rather than their opinions or predictions.

Example format for rewritten questions:
<rewritten_questions>
Original: Do you think you would buy this product?
Rewritten: When was the last time you purchased a similar product? What led to that decision?

Original: How much would you be willing to pay for this service?
Rewritten: What similar services have you paid for in the past? What made them worth the price?
</rewritten_questions>

Provide your rewritten questions and any additional suggested questions directly, without any further explanation or commentary. Do not output XML tags, just use headers with markdown.

How to use this prompt:

1. Copy and paste the prompt into your LLM of choice (e.g., Claude or ChatGPT)

2. Fill in your original questions or leave it blank for suggestions

3. Run the prompt

The prompt will output:

• A list of improved user interview questions that focus on past behaviors and experiences

• If no questions were provided, a list of 10 suggested user interview questions

Here's an example output that Claude gave me when I inputted questions that I used to validate my product, the AI Growth Kit:

The output questions are excellent because they focus on the user's past experiences, challenges, and behaviors rather than asking for opinions or predictions about the future.

This approach helps you gather more reliable and actionable insights to inform your product decisions.

💡 Wrapping Up

In today's lesson, we learned how to transform our user interview questions using "The Mom Test" principles and AI.

Here's a quick recap:

• Asking the wrong questions in user interviews can lead to inaccurate insights and poor product decisions

• "The Mom Test" teaches us to ask about past behaviors and experiences instead of opinions or predictions

• The "Mom Test" prompt helps you turn bad interview questions into good ones by focusing on the user's life and specific past events

This prompt also helped me internalize the principles of "The Mom Test" and apply them consistently in my user interviews.

It’s one thing reading the book and thinking about the principles, but it’s another thing to see your questions being rewritten into better alternatives.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this, consider forwarding this newsletter to a friend or colleague.

What would you like me to write about in the next post? Reply to this email and let me know.

Moritz

P.S. I recently launched the AI Growth Kit and over 180+ entrepreneurs have already joined. It’s a system that lets you:

• Create high-quality content in seconds

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