Interviews
Interviews are a fundamental research method for direct contact with users or stakeholders, to collect the personal accounts of their experiences, attitudes, opinions and perceptions.
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Interviews are a fundamental research method for direct contact with users or stakeholders, to collect the personal accounts of their experiences, attitudes, opinions and perceptions.
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A user interview is a type of qualitative, ethnographic research technique. The “user” is an individual who uses the product or service or interacts with the system that you wish to study, and helps you to understand their goals, behaviours, needs, and motivations.
A user interview is not good at predicting future behaviour, but rather looks at existing mental models, which can be very insightful. It’s a good idea to conduct user research in combination with other research techniques, such as quantitative studies.
A stakeholder interview is a type of qualitative, primary research. A “stakeholder” is an individual who has deep knowledge about the challenge or aspect of challenge you are working towards solving. This individual is able to give great depth of information given their particular perspective in a short period of time. The information or connections they share can lead you to further research material or potential partners and champions.
You can conduct an interview in 30 to 60 minutes, or up to 90 minutes for an in-depth interview. This is ideally done in-person (so you can be attuned to your interviewees’ non-verbal communication), but can also be conducted via phone, or web audio/video. The general questioning technique is semi-structured and open-ended. This means you have a good sense of the topics you want to ask about, but don’t stick to a rigid line of questioning, to allow for unanticipated but insightful responses and better flow.
The following is a general guide to follow - please see the resource links below for more information. 1) Identify issue areas It takes a lot of preparation to run a successful research process. Know your research goals, and what you aim to achieve. It’s important to identify issue areas to focus on in your questioning (choose 5-7 issue areas to find out more about through your interviews).
2) Choose interviewees There are many ways to choose interviewees – choose the method that best meets your goals. You may need to go directly to the spaces where the user spends time to find them. Using a snowballing technique can also be helpful (choosing interviewees through personal referrals from contacts or previous interviewees). Ensure you are reaching a good cross-section of your user group, accounting for gender, age, socio-economic status, and so on.
3) Create an interview guide Create an interview guide for the person/ user or stakeholder group you are interviewing. See the next tab for tips on creating an interview guide.
4) Conduct the interview Open the interview with an explanation of who you are, what your project is, and how you anticipate the information you gather will be used. Ensure you have the interviewee’s consent to record the interview, or to use the interview material in any way (such as for quotes). Ask them if they want their anonymity protected, and reassure them that they will have a chance to vet the information before anything is published. It is helpful to start with a question that allows the interviewee to speak broadly about the topic at hand. Here, you can pick up on cues that will highlight their particular perspective (such as through descriptors they are using). Then, probe each of the issue areas you would like to understand better. Don’t ‘force’ your questions, but let them emerge naturally in the flow of the interview. 5) Debrief and analysis Make sure you leave enough time in between interviews to debrief the previous interview, refine your questions and techniques for the next interview, and to follow-up on new interviewee leads. It’s also very useful to review your interview right after conducting it, so you can fill in your notes, transcribe the interview or write down high-level insights.
6) Synthesis To analyze the results, collect all the concepts that emerge from your interviews in one place. One way of doing this is by writing the concepts on sticky notes and clustering them into meaningful patterns. Note which user group each idea comes from. Some clear themes will emerge. This is an oversimplified description of coding and analysis, but it will help you get started to understanding the user perspective. Refer to the sensemaking tab below for more information on how to make sense of the information you gather in interviews.
Nesta. DIY Toolkit, Interview Guide.
Service Design Toolkit. Interview Template.