Why Interview?

By asking the right questions and listening to what someone is saying, we can gain a deeper understanding of their behavior and reasons as to why they do what they do. Interviewing is an important early stage design process. Interviewing stakeholders aligns with the Understand phase of HCD, and I-Corps programs advocate for interviewing and observing as many stakeholders as possible. Interviews help you establish a common problem space with clients, stakeholders, and end users. It allows you and your team to document assumptions and predictions you had coming into the project. Interviews are a great opportunity to effectively understand a user’s needs in an efficient manner.

Best Practices

This section outlines some tips and tricks for interviewing project stakeholders.

Before you go to the field: It is important to acknowledge and be aware of your own perspective, assumptions, biases to open your mind to accept someone else’s perspective.

Make a list: Make a list of key stakeholders from all areas of your problem space. Find both typical and extreme users.

Reach out: For every 1 person your want to talk to, send email requests to 10 people. People are busy, so cast a wide net!

Know your why: Have a clear problem space set and know what you want to find out.

Look for articulated and unarticulated feedback: Try to capture what the interviewee (1) says, (2) does, (3) thinks, and (4) feels. They all may be different!

Think outside your exact context: What are analogous settings or extreme experiences where you might witness similar or relevant behaviors and activities in a different context? Analogous Experiences.

Preparing for the Interview

The next step is to draft interview questions. Your team should avoid questions that will elicit a yes/no response. You are looking for lengthy responses that reveal user needs, actions, and pain points. It is a good idea to prepare more questions than you think you will need. However, knowing that you won't get to all of the questions, prioritize the questions so you are sure to get to the questions that you need an answer to.