What Happened Next?

Teresa Torres's core insight: most product teams ask terrible interview questions. "What do you like? How do you decide?" Direct questions get shallow, unreliable answers.

The magic is asking for stories: "Tell me about the last time you..." Then just keep asking "What happened next?" Like a curious five-year-old. Except instead of "Why? Why? Why?" it's "What happened next? What happened next?"

Works on actual five-year-olds too.

"How was daycare?" gets you "Fine." "Tell me about lunch - who did you sit with?" gets you a story beginning. "What happened next?" - Now you're hearing about the friend drama, the game they invented, the thing that scared them.

Children, like customers, reveal their real needs through stories - not through interrogation. And your interview should feel like having a beer with a buddy (or in this case, juice boxes with a tiny human). Casual. Curious. Conversational.

The trick is actually listening instead of preparing your next question.