Analyze an Interview

The scenario

You just finished a 30-minute user interview. The insights are fresh but your notes are scattered — half-formed thoughts, interesting quotes you scribbled down, and a vague feeling that something important was said around the 20-minute mark. Instead of spending 1-2 hours writing it up (or letting it sit in a notebook forever), you'll get a structured research snapshot in 5 minutes.

Example output

Interview Snapshot: Sarah Chen, Enterprise Product Manager

Date: Jan 30, 2026 · Interviewer: Ron · Duration: 30 min

Key Jobs-to-Be-Done

  • "When I'm preparing for a quarterly review, I need to show ROI for features we shipped"
  • "When evaluating tools, I need to get my team onboarded before the trial expires"
  • "When I'm writing a PRD, I need to anticipate what the CTO will ask"

Opportunities Identified

  1. Users need faster time-to-value during trial period (evidence: strong — mentioned 3 times)
  2. Enterprise users need team-level reporting for exec buy-in (evidence: moderate)
  3. PRD review process is painful — "I never know if I've covered everything" (evidence: moderate)

Key Quotes

  • "I loved the product in my personal trial but couldn't convince my boss because there was no team dashboard."
  • "I spend more time formatting PRDs than thinking about the actual product decisions."
  • "Every product manager on my team does things differently — there's no standard."

Behavioral Observations

  • Got visibly frustrated when describing the PRD process
  • Mentioned "team" or "team-level" 7 times — collaboration is a core need
  • Currently uses 4 different tools for product management work

Follow-up Questions

  • How do you currently track team adoption of new tools?
  • What does your boss need to see to approve a purchase?
  • Walk me through the last PRD you wrote — what took the longest?

How to create this in 5 minutes

Step 1. Make sure your Product Management OS folder (second-pm-os) is open in Claude.

Step 2. In the chat panel, type:

/user-interview-analyzer

Step 3. Paste your interview notes. Any format works — bullet points, sentences, even a transcript dump. Here's an example of what you might paste:

Interview with Sarah Chen - enterprise product manager at a series B company
About 120 people at her company

She's been trying product management tools for her team. Tried a few during free trials
but couldn't get buy-in from leadership because no team dashboard or
team-level reporting. "I loved the product in my personal trial but 
couldn't convince my boss"

Spends a lot of time on PRDs. Says formatting takes longer than thinking.
Every product manager on her team does things differently. Wants standards.

Mentioned needing to show ROI to leadership a lot. Quarterly reviews
are a big deal. Needs to prove feature impact.

She uses 4 different tools right now. Seemed frustrated about that.

Step 4. Claude may ask what outcome or opportunity area you're exploring. You can answer (e.g., "we're trying to understand why enterprise trials don't convert") or say "just analyze what you see."

Step 5. Claude generates an interview snapshot and saves it to:

discovery/outputs/interview-snapshot-[name].md

If something doesn't look right

Tell Claude what to change. For example:

  • "I think the biggest insight was about team adoption, not time-to-value — can you restructure around that?"
  • "Add more detail about her current tool stack"
  • "The quote about formatting PRDs is important — move it higher"
  • "I forgot to mention: she also said her CEO wants weekly metrics reports"

What's next?

Previous
Context Optimization
Next
Build Personas