Interview Guide
Interview Limitations
Functional Fixedness — people’s thinking is limited to existing structures
- People understand their world within a structure
- What we usually get: adding new features, fixing problems, transferring features we’ve seen elsewhere. Seldom a total redesign.
- People cannot imagine hypothetical situations
- People are happy to make something up
What people do not know about themselves
- Predicting what they would do, like, or want
- Estimating the last time they did something
- Estimating how often they do things
- How much they like things on an absolute scale
What people do know about themselves
- What they do
- How they do things
- Their opinions about their current activities
- Their complaints about their current activities
- How much they like one thing compared with another
Easy mistakes to make
- It’s a mistake to share your opinions — People want to please and interviewer opinions shape what people tell them.
- It’s a mistake to do all the talking — The interviewer should aim for 20-25% of total interview word count.
- They fail to follow up interviewee remarks — When inspiration fails, “Can you tell me more about that?”
Interview Outline
Start with high level questions and small talk about others
- What does your work organization do?
- What kinds of people work there?
- How does your family start the day?
Then move to easy, factual questions
- Who usually gets dinner ready?
- Can you recall a restaurant meal with your family? Who was there?
Task, roles and details of tasks
- What do you do first?
- What do you do when the deadline is soon?
- Does anything slow you down?
- What do you do when you have this trouble?
Walk through tasks “yesterday” or most recently
- Where were you? What were you working on?
- Who else was there?
- What happened next?
Follow-Up
- Can you describe how you select music in your car?
- Can you tell me about a time when you did that?
- Have you ever tried that and it didn’t work?
- Was that what you expected?
- Does that problem happen often?
- What does “system” mean here?
- I am hearing you say…
Ending the Interview
- Do you have any suggestions for us, or last thoughts?
- Yes, everything we have discussed is confidential. We won’t reveal your identity to anyone.
- Thank you for talking with me. Here’s my card if you want to get in touch.
Avoid
- Avoid describing details of your plan or design
- Avoid asking about features; ask about the underlying need that would make a feature useful
- Avoid leading people with possible answers.
Interview Tactics
- Repetition/Rephrase
- Get Behind Behavior — “What were you expecting to see?”
- Ask for an Example
- Go Step by Step
- Question a term or concept (even if you think you know it) — “What do you mean by
___?” - Summarize what was said and draw out a conclusion or concept — “So you’re saying that
___?” - Question pronoun references
- Check for deviant cases
- Go for generalization — “Do you often
___?” — this is mostly to identify deviant cases, people don’t reliably know how to generalize many behaviors. - Clarify expectations — “You expected
___and got___?” - Clarify activity
- Clarity metaphors
- Ask for a story