Research Question Mindmap Experiment
by Rachel GlavesMy project team is in the beginning stages of running some in-home research interviews right now, so I’ve been preparing the questions we want to ask and the activities we might want to try. I brainstormed, wrote lots of ideas down on stickies, asked my teammates about big themes we wanted to cover, and then carefully wrote up the top questions in a nice big list. But then I realized – the list format is really pretty unhelpful. In a good research interview, you don’t follow the list from top to bottom, you jump from topic to topic as each come up. At best you use your list to refer back to in quick glances, to remind yourself of what you need to touch on.
I asked myself, what if these questions were in an easy-to-glance-at-format, with the big ideas clearly shown, and perhaps linked in an organic way? What if the questions looked like a conversation instead of a survey? So I created a branching mind map of the same concepts in my original list. After a few false starts, I focused on three things:
- Use one- or two-word concepts, not full sentences
- De-emphasize the details, since they’re there as reminders only
- Create a landscape with color and placement that us visual thinkers can internalize easily
Here’s (structurally) what it looks like right now:
Over the next two weeks my team will using it as a reference during our interviews. It’s definitely not meant to be a stand-alone document, but I’m interested in seeing how it helps us. It might even be good as a worksheet to jot down notes, or a review tool to document where the conversation went. What do you think?
Entries (RSS)
October 11th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Thanks for sharing. Want to see your follow-up about how it works in your interviews.
October 12th, 2008 at 9:23 am
I definitely think it makes more sense to map things out than to have lists of information. It lets us look at the information as a whole a bit better. I’m curious to hear about any changes this has to the interview process, or if it makes it easier/harder to annotate your research questions. I also wonder if you have tried out any mind mapping software and think any might be more or less appropriate than others for this sort of thing.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:52 am
I have used mind mapping software for a variety of different and think that what Adaptive Path are doing is a great idea. So often our thinking is restricted to lists and other linear formats, whereas mind mapping allows you to really (bad pun warning) think outside the square.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:54 am
ooops, missed a word and don’t seem to be able to edit my post!
First line is meant to read ‘I have used mind mapping software for a variety of different things‘
October 15th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
If you don’t mind sharing, what tool did you use to generate the mind map in your article? Thanks in advance.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:45 am
[...] Research Question Mindmap Experiment [...]
October 16th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Good idea. I love jumping from one topic to the other, and asking some questions about a topic and if i see the participant is getting stuck in naturally finding answers, then I change the topic and then come back to the same topic unexpectedly. Then participant magically finds a natural and immediate answer – which i think is more honest…I often try to fit all my questions on one page so that I could easily check if I covered them. Thanks for showing this technique – looking forward to use this soon
October 20th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I think the mind map is an interesting way to organize your research questions. I’ll be interested to see a follow up on if it worked or not. And, it would be really interesting to mindmap the interview notes and see how they stack up to the mindmap of the interview guide. Do they match? Did you cover your main topics? Did one topic from the interview become more important than it was in the interview guide? I would think if certain topics become more important in the interview, then you know it’s a trend and you can reorganize your research questions per the trend. That would be a very cool exercise.
Back in the old days at E-Lab in Chicago and then at Sapient in NYC, we came up with creative ways to organize our research questions – mainly because researchers on the same project have different interviewing styles and needs.
One of my favorite ways to organize research questions is to create a bookmark of the main topics. That way, you can move the bookmark as you turn the pages in your notebook. This works especially well for me as I rarely need the specific questions and I prefer using notebooks than writing directly in the interview guide.
Good luck on the research.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Roseman:
I used Omnigraffle, which is Mac-only, but Visio does a good job on the PC side. In Omnigraffle, you can use the outline panel to write your content in an outline view, and while you’re doing that Omnigraffle automatically makes it into a chart. Very handy.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Cory:
The bookmark idea sounds neat. It gets right to the my original idea – it’s small, portable and you can glance at it unobtrusively. A full sheet of colored bubbles felt a little weird to have in front of me during our interviews, and I wished I’d done a miniature version in shades of gray. Despite that, none of our participants asked about the mindmap, so I don’t think they found it distracting.
Also: keeping the questions to one sheet of paper is a great tip. We didn’t do that, and having to flip back and forth between pages was a big pain.
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
This is also a great way to demonstrate to folks who may be accompanying you to the interview that the process is non-linear in nature, which may be an eye-opener to more linear, analytical people.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
What great timing to find this discussion. I’m getting ready to draft interview prompts and love this idea. I’ve struggled with the list format as well so I may give this a try. I’m doing these interviews via phone, so having bubbles in front of me is not an issue. Thanks for sharing this.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Zafer:
At first I thought you were joking about bouncing around in an interview. But I quickly reread and wholeheartedly agree. It’s something I do too and does make it all feel more natural, while at the same time I think helps the interviewee be more honest as you put it.