Interviewing

Goals

• Learn about users, needs and tasks from their perspective
• Explore answers in depth with subsequent questions

Properties

• Query method relies on indirect information
• Depends on interviewee's ability to recall, prioritize and verbalize information
• Allows for some flexibility in asking questions

Interviewing challenges

• Comfort articulating concerns and issues
• Ability to recall issues and activities
• Assessing frequencies, durations, risks
• Ambiguous language in questions and answers
• Avoiding bias in questions and answers

General structure of interview

These phases are based on Kuniavsky's list (p. 118).

• Introduction
• Warm-up
• General issues
• Deep focus
• Retrospective
• Wrap-up

Additional strategies

• Create an interviewing guide with specific questions and "control statements"
• Use common language or define terms
• Avoid vague qualifiers like "many", "a lot", "rarely". Ask for answers with concrete durations or frequencies even if they are estimates.
• For richer answers, ask about a specific, recent activity

Items for discussion

• How do these strategies address interviewing challenges?
• Role of notes, audio or video