1 min lesson
Qualitative rigor that holds up
Say what this means in practice: "Rigor here is not academic ceremony."
Step 1 of 3
Anyone can run interviews. The methods panel is checking whether your qual would survive a skeptical staff engineer reading the transcript next to your claim.
Cursor's users are professional developers who can smell a leading question and will tell you their workaround instead of their real problem. Rigor here is not academic ceremony. It is the chain you can show from a raw quote to a coded theme to the recommendation you put in front of a PM, with the bias-control choices visible at each step.
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Advanced table
Reference table
- Instead of
- “Would faster autocomplete make you more productive?”
- Ask
- “Walk me through the last time autocomplete got in your way.”
- Why
- Hypotheticals invite agreement; a recalled episode surfaces real friction.
- Instead of
- “Do you like the agent feature?”
- Ask
- “The last time you used the agent, what did you do right after it finished?”
- Why
- Opinion questions reward politeness; behavior questions reward truth.
- Instead of
- “How often do you review AI-generated code?”
- Ask
- “Open the last PR where you accepted a suggestion. What did you check?”
- Why
- Frequency self-reports are guesses; an artifact anchors them to reality.
| Instead of | Ask | Why |
|---|---|---|
| “Would faster autocomplete make you more productive?” | “Walk me through the last time autocomplete got in your way.” | Hypotheticals invite agreement; a recalled episode surfaces real friction. |
| “Do you like the agent feature?” | “The last time you used the agent, what did you do right after it finished?” | Opinion questions reward politeness; behavior questions reward truth. |
| “How often do you review AI-generated code?” | “Open the last PR where you accepted a suggestion. What did you check?” | Frequency self-reports are guesses; an artifact anchors them to reality. |
Trade opinion and hypothesis questions for recalled, specific episodes tied to an artifact.
Once you have a behavior, ladder to the why. Each answer earns one more “what made that matter to you?” until you hit a value or a constraint, not another feature request.
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Optional practice
Practice: Qualitative rigor that holds up
QA PM asks you to validate that a planned feature will boost productivity. You only have time for five interviews. Which opening question best fits a rigorous qual approach?