Adaptive Path Blog

I recently had the opportunity to look over a list of excellent questions that my colleagues had put together in preparation for conducting research interviews. There was little to add in regards to content, so I gave instead my unbidden 2 cents about the form of the interview and some of my experiences in turning lists of questions into productive and interesting research interviews. And now I will share it with you!

Flow. What is the participant’s experience of the interview? How can the experience best be crafted to support storytelling by the participant? How can the environment you are in with the participant be integrated in to your questions? Questions are often organized by research topic, but it is valuable to consider question order from the perspective of a natural conversation. For example, you might want to know what kinds of mobile devices a participant owns and also who are the people they have close relationships with. Consider how a conversation might naturally transition from what you make calls with to whom you make calls to.

Build rapport. Think about how your questions build and re-enforce rapport. Make sure you lead with icebreaker questions that are not too personal, but easy to answer and show that you are very interested in the person’s life. Open ended questions are good for this….for mobile research, perhaps something like “Can you tell me the story of mobile phones in your life….like when you first heard of them until now?” Save demographic questions that haven’t been answered in the course of the interview until last, where these questions won’t feel so formal and distancing.

Show over tell. Is there ways for people to show you devices, artifacts, pictures, things in their life that they can use to help them talk more robustly and accurately about their life experiences. For example, when talking about text messaging, invite the participant to demonstrate how they use their phone and show you a record of the text conversations they have had with it.

Pacing. Save more difficult questions, like asking someone to project themselves into the future until after you have a comfortable rapport….until you have shared a laugh or smile. This pacing gives people time to feel that they can take risks in answering your questions such as telling you the “real truth”, sharing their hunches and trying to answer questions they don’t feel they quite have the answers for. It also gives you the ability to support the participant, when necessary, in answering difficult questions by helping them reflect on what they have said thus far. Pacing and quality of rapport are obviously also important factors when asking socially difficult questions related to things like money, relationships, politics, etc.

Language choice. Consider the wording of questions to find a balance that asks for relevant details without making people feel less than competent….they are and should be able to demonstrate that they are experts on their own lives. For example, asking people to provide a percentage breakdown of how they spend their day might be tricky and distancing depending on people’s mathematical understandings of the world.

Prioritize. Get the answers to those question you most need answered. This prioritization may change over time, but its good to have priorities because once you find a way to get people to talk, they sometimes don’t stop.

Practice and revise. Consider doing practice interviews with friends or colleagues….it doesn’t matter if they are not in the target group…the goal is to check timing, flow, rapport, and question impact. It’s amazing the things I’ve overlooked, underestimated and assumed that leap to the fore once the interview is enacted.

The thing that I often remind myself when writing question lists and creating research protocols is that this is an enterprise in experience design. As a designer creating and conducting research, I have the opportunity to craft a useful, facincating and valuable experience for both the participant and myself, in this case, the interview.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 7:29 am and is filed under Tips & Tricks, User Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This post is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.