Extreme Users #UserInterviews

Apr 19, 2021 · 1 min read

You might have heard of the “Extreme Users” concept in the context of User Interviews. Imagine you have a 2D map of the people that are in the target group of a product, and that people are placed on this map according to their similarities with people around them. The main idea of “Extreme users” is that you pick people that are in the borders of the map as they are the most different from each other.

Now you might be thinking, how do I know my target group? how do I know if people are similar or different? This will also likely happen if you are starting on a new project or product.

This is were the iterative process of Interaction Design enters, by doing User Interviews in rounds of increasingly larger number of people you will naturally realise what groups of people are relevant to talk more with and what groups are not worth spending more time with. Start with 5 people, then 10, then 20, and so on. This process is not scientific, and there is no wrong way to do it, but trust that it works.