Unstructured Interviews: Configuration and Best Practices

An Unstructured Interview on Qualz.ai gives the AI moderator maximum flexibility to follow the participant's lead. Instead of a list of specific questions, you provide high-level topics and subtopics that serve as a flexible checklist of themes to explore. The AI starts with broad, open-ended prompts and lets the conversation unfold naturally, while ensuring all key areas are covered.

What Makes an Unstructured Interview Different?

In unstructured mode, the AI moderator acts as a curious, adaptive conversationalist:

• Topics instead of questions — Your guidelines consist of high-level themes and subtopics, not scripted questions
• Participant-led exploration — The AI follows the participant's lead, exploring their thoughts deeply before moving to the next topic
• Broad, open-ended prompts — The AI starts with prompts like "Tell me about your experience with..." or "What's been on your mind lately regarding...?"
• Deep follow-up — The AI can ask multiple follow-up questions to explore interesting threads, not limited to a single probe
• Flexible order — Topics are explored in whatever order feels most natural based on the conversation flow

This makes unstructured interviews ideal for exploratory research where you want to discover themes and insights you haven't anticipated.

How to Set Up an Unstructured Interview

Step 1: Select Unstructured Interview Type

During the interview creation process, select Unstructured from the Interview Type dropdown.

Step 2: Generate or Define Your Topics

Option A: Generate with AI Click Generate with AI in the Interview Guidelines section. The platform generates high-level topics with subtopics rather than specific questions. The output includes:

• An Interview Details section summarizing the purpose, flow, and time allocation
• Topics (typically 1-6 depending on interview duration) with subtopics underneath

Example of generated output for a 15-minute interview:

Interview Details
- Purpose: Explore remote team collaboration challenges
- Flow: Start broad with work context, then explore tools and pain points
- Time Allocation: 3-5 minutes per topic
- Total Topics: 3

Topic 1 - Work Context
  Subtopic 1: Overall role and day-to-day responsibilities
  Subtopic 2: Team structure and communication patterns

Topic 2 - Collaboration Tools & Workflows
  Subtopic 1: Primary tools used for async and sync communication
  Subtopic 2: How files and decisions are shared across the team

Topic 3 - Friction Points & Wishful Thinking
  Subtopic 1: Recurring frustrations in cross-team collaboration
  Subtopic 2: What an ideal workflow would look like

Typical topic counts by duration:

• 5-10 minutes: 1-3 topics
• 10-15 minutes: 3-4 topics
• 15-20 minutes: 4-5 topics
• 20+ minutes: 5-6 topics (maximum)

Option B: Write Your Own Topics Define your own themes and subtopics. Keep them broad enough for open exploration but focused enough to align with your research objectives. Subtopics should guide the conversation, not prescribe exact questions.

Step 3: Review Your Topic Framework

Before saving, verify that:

• Topics are broad enough to allow natural conversation (avoid overly specific topics that feel like disguised questions)
• Subtopics break down each topic into manageable areas without being prescriptive
• The total number of topics is realistic for your time limit (3-5 minutes per topic)
• All your research objectives are covered across the topic set

How the AI Moderator Runs an Unstructured Interview

Opening

The AI introduces itself, explains that this will be an open conversation where there are no right or wrong answers, and immediately opens with a broad, exploratory prompt related to the first topic.

During the Interview

The AI uses the topics as a flexible checklist rather than a script:

1. Opens a topic with a broad prompt (e.g., "Tell me about..." or "What's been on your mind regarding...")
2. Follows the participant's lead — if their response touches on a subtopic, the AI explores it
3. Asks deep follow-up questions to understand context, motivations, and emotions
4. Naturally transitions to the next topic when the current one has been sufficiently explored
5. Adapts the order — if the participant naturally brings up a later topic, the AI follows rather than redirecting

Key behaviors:

• The AI creates its own questions in the moment, grounded in the topics and subtopics you defined
• It can rephrase, restructure, and explore freely
• It still asks only one question per turn
• It ensures all topics are covered by the end of the interview, even if explored in a different order

Closing

After all topics have been explored (or the participant chooses to end), the AI thanks them sincerely and concludes.

When to Use Unstructured Interviews

Ideal scenarios:

• Early-stage discovery research — When you don't yet know the right questions to ask
• Exploring complex or sensitive topics — Where participants need space to share at their own pace
• Understanding lived experiences — Phenomenological research, narrative inquiry, or ethnographic-style interviews
• Innovation and ideation research — When you want to discover unanticipated needs and behaviors
• Expert interviews — Where the participant's knowledge should drive the conversation direction

Consider a different mode when:

• You need to compare responses across participants using identical questions — try Structured
• You have specific questions but want some flexibility — try Semi-Structured
• You have a specific research methodology like problem discovery or value proposition testing — try Specialized Modes

Best Practices

1. Write topics, not questions — Your guidelines should describe areas to explore, not specific questions. "Participant's relationship with technology" is a good topic. "How often do you use your phone?" is a question disguised as a topic.

2. Use subtopics as guideposts — Subtopics help the AI know what aspects of a topic to explore without prescribing exact questions. Think of them as "make sure you cover this" reminders.

3. Keep topics mutually exclusive — Avoid overlap between topics so the AI doesn't circle back to themes already discussed.

4. Trust the AI's exploration — The AI is designed to dig deep and follow interesting threads. Resist the temptation to over-specify your guidelines.

5. Use Additional Instructions to set the tone — For example: "This research is about lived experiences with chronic illness — be especially sensitive and give participants time to reflect" or "Participants are C-suite executives, keep the conversation strategic."

6. Plan for 3-5 minutes per topic — Unstructured conversations take time to develop. Don't overload your topic list.

7. Pilot test extensively — Since the AI creates its own questions, run several pilot tests with AI Participants to ensure the AI covers your topics effectively and asks appropriate questions.

Related Guides

• Understanding Interview Types — Compare all three interview modes
• Structured Interviews — For maximum consistency
• Semi-Structured Interviews — For balanced flexibility