Department of Health and Social Care
To provide practical, evidence-based recommendations to the DHSC, so employees can benefit from an improved intranet.
“From start to finish the Vu team have been faultless, not only is the end product incredible, so too is the journey.”
Pete Kelly, Imployable
Is your customer research lacking clarity or depth?
Generic surveys and unstructured conversations often miss the insights you really need.
Without a clear methodology, user feedback can be inconsistent, shallow, or misinterpreted, making it hard to identify meaningful patterns or take confident action.
Structured and semi-structured interviews provide a repeatable, scalable way to uncover real customer motivations, pain points, and preferences.
They help you move beyond assumptions and surface the detail required for effective UX design, product decisions, and marketing strategy.
Many businesses make assumptions of their audience, missing key feedback.
Even with great client or stakeholder relationships, interviewing customers can be awkward for both parties and lead to (let’s say) not the whole truth being told.
The challenge lies not only in asking the right questions but in structuring them for meaningful statistical analysis.
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Structured and semi-structured interview services
Structured interviews for consistent, scalable data
Structured interviews follow a clearly defined interview process with a fixed set of predefined questions.
This ensures consistency across participants and makes it easier to conduct objective evaluation using standardised interview scoring criteria.
It is ideal for situations where comparability, repeatability and internal benchmarking matter, such as audits or stakeholder alignment.
Semi-structured interviews for deeper qualitative insight
Semi-structured interviews combine the reliability of structure with the freedom to explore rich insights.
We start with a thematic guide but use open-ended interview questions and a conversational interview approach to dive deeper into motivations and behaviours.
This format supports qualitative semi-structured interviews that offer flexibility without losing focus, and we help you understand when to choose semi-structured vs structured methods depending on your research goals.
Custom interview guides and methodology
Every interview study we run is built on a clear behavioural interview framework.
We tailor the methodology, script and follow-ups to match your audience and objectives, drawing from best-practice interview techniques and adapting to different formats across stakeholder, user or customer research.
This includes interview method comparisons to ensure the most suitable approach for your needs.
“Vu encouraged us to think beyond the day to day content planning, helping us find the opportunities where we are not doing something that we actually could be.”
Research designed around real people
Gain actionable insight from the people who matter most to your business.
Behavioural interviews that surface decision triggers
We use behavioural interview techniques to go beyond surface-level answers.
By asking structured and semi-structured questions focused on lived experiences, we uncover how your customers think, feel and act at key points in their decision-making process.
This helps refine messaging, improve service design, and prioritise the changes that make a difference.
Stakeholder and user alignment for clearer direction
Structured interview studies help align internal stakeholders as well as external users.
We work with product owners, marketers, customers and partners to surface differing perspectives and spot friction in expectations.
These multi-perspective interviews contribute to stronger collaboration and better decisions throughout your digital projects.
Interviews that complement other research formats
Our structured interview services sit neatly alongside surveys, usability tests, and other research techniques.
We often use them at early stages of digital transformation, customer journey discovery, or UX strategy. Sometimes they can add huge value to early brand discussions or complex website projects.
When paired with data-driven methods, interviews add human context and emotional clarity to the numbers.
From insight to impact, how we deliver value
Our structured and semi-structured interview services don’t just collect responses.
They uncover patterns, validate assumptions, and inform critical business decisions. Every insight is analysed, synthesised, and turned into actionable recommendations that drive your digital strategy forward.
By aligning our interview findings with broader business objectives (such as improving customer experience, validating new service ideas, or guiding service discovery) we ensure your research delivers more than just data. It delivers direction.
Call to Action
Looking to uncover real customer insight through structured or semi-structured interviews?
Why Vu for interview-based research?
Human-focused research
We specialise in customer-first research using behavioural interview techniques to gather rich, user-centred insights that reveal motivations and decision-making.
One discovery process
Our discovery workshops blend structured interviews and design research sessions to ensure every conversation helps shape smarter, user-driven outcomes.
Research that informs
Insight-driven marketing and data-backed strategy starts with structured interview analysis—ideal for planning content, messaging, and research-led design direction.
Adaptable methodology
We tailor structured and semi-structured interviews for varied audiences, using flexible formats to support inclusive, consistent and goal-focused research.
Examples of Structured Interviews in our work
Read More about Department of Health and Social Care
Venture People
Guided a full brand refresh for Venture People, leading to 9 new enquiries in month one from a previously underperforming site.
University of Bedfordshire
Transforming an offline research toolkit into a plan for viable software as part of pre-tender activity.
FAQs
A structured interview uses a predefined set of questions to ensure consistency across all participants. This allows for better comparison of responses and more reliable data, for example “8/10 people said…”
This data and feedback can inform strategic business decisions, form testimonial content or supporting messaging in brand communications.
Structured interviews provide clear, actionable insights by gathering consistent, comparable data from participants.
This helps you understand more about your brand perception, customer needs, improve products or services, or make informed business decisions.
We use a carefully designed framework to guide the interview process, ensuring questions are relevant and unbiased. Our team ensures participant comfort and privacy, collecting data that reflects genuine opinions.
Structured interviews follow a consistent set of questions, allowing for clear comparisons and reliable data.
Unstructured interviews or semi unstrcutred interviews can also be implemented, however, while they are more conversational, they tend to produce inconsistent feedback that’s harder to draw direct comparisons from.
They enable objective evaluation, allowing clear comparison between participants using interview scoring criteria and consistent methodology.
Yes. We create custom interview guides tailored to your audience and goals, using proven behavioural interview frameworks and techniques.
Absolutely. We frequently conduct structured interviews with internal teams, customers, and partners as part of wider discovery workshops or UX research.
Workshops & Reporting
Department of Health and Social Care
See how we provided practical, evidence-based recommendations to the DHSC, so employees can benefit from an improved intranet.
Read The Story“Huge thanks this week to the gang at Vu Online who have moved at light speed to help me out, and who are generally just all round lovely people.”
Georgie Moores, DXW
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