How to Prepare Discovery Interview Kits

A discovery interview kit is the prep package a product team uses before talking to customers. It defines the research goal, the customer segment, the method, the personas, the non-leading script, the note-taking template, and the success criteria for learning.

The kit matters because interviews go wrong before the call starts. Teams ask about the future, pitch the idea, accept compliments, or write questions that steer the customer toward the answer they wanted. A good kit makes honest learning easier than accidental selling.

Why discovery interviews quietly mislead teams

Discovery research fails when the script rewards agreement instead of evidence. "Would you use this?" feels productive, but it asks the customer to predict a future behavior. "Is this painful?" invites politeness. "Would you pay?" often produces a compliment, not a buying signal.

The better pattern is behavioral: ask about what happened, what the customer tried, where the workaround broke, and what they paid for already. That takes prep. The interviewer needs a goal, a segment, constraints, and a script built around past-tense stories before the first call is booked.

What the manual process looks like

Done by hand, preparing an interview kit is a focused research-design exercise:

1. Gather the problem hypothesis, support tickets, churn notes, prior research, competitor reviews, or any other attached material.
2. Define the customer segment and the behavior that qualifies someone for an interview.
3. Choose the method that fits the goal and constraints: Mom Test problem validation, JTBD, switch interviews, or journey mapping.
4. Draft three distinct personas from the evidence, with jobs, pains, gains, unexpected insights, and product-fit notes.
5. Write the interview script with opening, warm-up, JTBD core, probing questions, wrap-up, and a note-taking template.
6. Audit every question for leading language, hypotheticals, yes/no framing, and pitching.

The hard part is not typing questions. The hard part is resisting the questions that make the team feel right.

What an agent can automate

An agent can prepare the kit because the method is explicit and the review criteria are concrete:

• Plan the prep. The agent pins the research goal, names the segment, lists constraints, and chooses the interview method that fits goal, segment, and access.
• Ground the personas. It builds three distinct personas from the audience brief and attached material, and flags gaps instead of inventing missing evidence.
• Draft the script. It writes an opening, warm-up, JTBD core, probing techniques, wrap-up, and note-taking template.
• Rewrite weak questions. It audits the script against The Mom Test bar: no leading questions, no hypotheticals, no yes/no traps, no pitching, and no asking the customer to design the product.
• Surface ambiguity. It asks the human when the research goal is unclear, the data is too thin, or the method depends on a product decision.

The agent prepares the artifact. The human still decides whether the kit is good enough to use with customers.

The guardrails that make it safe

Discovery work needs a bias check because a confident bad script can create false certainty. The guardrail is a workflow that makes the critique a required step before approval.

The agent plans, drafts personas, writes the script, and then audits every question against the Mom Test rules. The approval step waits after the critique, so the team sees the prep plan, personas, script, note template, rewritten questions, and success criteria before any interview is scheduled. The workflow does not recruit participants or run interviews on its own.

Set it up in Task Machine

The Discovery Interview Kit playbook installs the research workflow as working records in your workspace: the Interview Kit Researcher agent, the audience and persona brief document, the discovery interview prep, interview script, and user-personas skills, and the triggered workflow that ends in approval. Setup takes a few minutes. You need a Task Machine workspace and permission to install playbooks (workspace owners have it). Existing research can be attached later. Until then, the agent works from the brief and flags gaps.

1. Find the playbook

Open Playbooks in your workspace and search for "discovery interview", or browse the Product category. The gallery card shows the kit as a triggered playbook for preparing customer interviews.

2. Preview what it installs

Preview & install shows the Interview Kit Researcher, the Build interview kit workflow, the Audience & persona brief document, and the three skills that carry the research method. Confirm that the workflow includes the leading-question critique and the approval step.

3. Define the interview scope

Start setup asks for the customer segment, hypotheses, interview goals, and questions or topics to avoid. Write these as operating constraints, not polished research copy. They become the starting point for the prep plan and script critique.

4. Generate and review

Generate customized playbook customizes the researcher and workflow around your segment and goals. Review the result before install. The important checks are whether the agent has enough context to choose a method, whether it knows which topics to avoid, and whether the approval step remains after the critique.

5. Install

Install customized playbook creates the kit workflow and document. Two follow-ups arrive in your inbox: fill the audience and persona brief, then start Build interview kit. The first run produces the prep plan, three personas, script, note template, and critique, then waits for approval before the script is used with customers.

What good looks like

Three signals show that the kit is ready:

• The method matches the goal. Problem validation, JTBD, switch, and journey interviews are not interchangeable.
• The questions are behavioral. Core questions ask about past actions, current workarounds, real pains, and actual tradeoffs.
• The personas cite evidence or flag gaps. A weak persona reads like a stereotype. A useful persona is grounded in attached material and explicit about what is unknown.

Common questions

Does the playbook schedule interviews? No. It prepares the kit. Recruiting and scheduling stay with the team because participant access and consent need human handling.

Can it work before we have much research data? Yes, but the output should flag gaps. The playbook is designed to say when personas are under-grounded rather than inventing certainty.

Why does it create three personas? The bundle's persona skill builds three distinct, non-overlapping personas so the team can see different jobs, pains, gains, and product-fit risks inside the target audience.

What should reviewers look for before approving? Look for future-tense questions, yes/no questions, disguised pitching, and any question that tells the customer what answer would help the team. Those should be rewritten before the kit is used.