Interview notes
Paste an interview transcript and get notes you can hand to anybody: the quotes word for word with nothing tidied, what the person actually did kept separate from what they say they want, and your own guide marked up with which questions got answered and which did not.
- Asks for
- The transcript — pasted, or the file your recorder exported
- Your interview guide, if you had one, so it can be marked up
- Who you spoke to, in a line, so the notes say whose view this is
- Gives back
- Quotes word for word, attributed, with nothing tidied
- What they did, kept apart from what they want and what they believe
- Your guide marked: answered, dodged, not reached
- What this interview settled, and what it leaves open for the next one
- Plan
- Pro and Max
What it gives you
Did — "I gave up on it in March. Now I just paste the Jira filter into Slack." Did — Checked the board twice during the call to answer a question about dates. Wants — "Honestly I would love it to just write the summary for me." A wish, not evidence. They have not tried a tool that does this. Believes about others — "Nobody on my team reads it." (Not asked how they know.) Guide: Q1–Q4 answered. Q5 answered hypothetically. Q6–Q7 not reached; time went on Q3.
How it works
The expensive mistake in interview notes is the smoothing. Somebody writes up what the participant meant, drops the hesitation, merges two half-answers into one clear position, and the team then makes a decision on a sentence nobody said. By the time anyone goes back to the recording, the decision is six weeks old.
So the quotes here are verbatim and marked as quotes. Everything else is labelled by what kind of thing it is: something the person did, something they said they would like, something they believe about other people. Those three get mixed together in most notes and they carry completely different weight — a wish is not evidence, and a report about colleagues is not an observation.
Your guide comes back marked up, which is the part that changes the next interview rather than this one. Questions that got a real answer, questions that got a hypothetical, questions you never reached because the time went. Three interviews in, that tells you your guide is too long while the round is still running.
Who it is for
Anyone who has just finished an interview and has a transcript, a recorder export or their own messy typing, and twenty other things to do.
Where it stops
It reads what is in the transcript and nothing else: it will not fill a gap with a plausible sentence, and where the recording is unclear the notes say so rather than guessing. One interview is one person, and a set of notes is not a finding — that takes several, which is what Interview synthesis is for.
Questions people ask
Does the transcript get shared when I share the notes?
No. The transcript stays with you. What a share link shows is the notes — the quotes, the separation of did from wanted, the marked-up guide — and not the underlying transcript text. That split exists because a participant agreed to talk to you, not to have their whole conversation passed around a company, and because a transcript usually contains names and details that have nothing to do with the research.
Why separate what someone did from what they said they want?
Because they predict completely different things. What a person did last Tuesday is evidence about behaviour you can check and build on. What they say they want is a guess about a future version of themselves, and it is reliably optimistic — people say yes to features they will never open. Notes that mix the two give a roadmap argument the appearance of evidence while resting on wishes.
Can I use a transcript from a recorder like Fireflies or Otter?
Yes. Paste the transcript those services produce, or upload the file. Speaker labels help and are used where they exist; where they are missing or wrong, the notes attribute what they can and say where attribution is uncertain rather than inventing a speaker. Timestamps are kept, so you can go back to the recording for anything that matters.
Run it on your own work
Interview notes needs an account, because it writes against what you give it and remembers what you have told it before. It is part of Pro and Max. Or see what the plans cost first.