- Let's talk about interviews.
I'll bet that most of you have been
in an interview of some sort.
Could have been for a job, or a college application,
or maybe you witnessed something,
or gave feedback on a product or experience.
Interviews are a fairly common research tool,
and if done well can lead to some really great discoveries,
but don't let your familiarity get the best of you.
There are some mistakes that can ruin your interview data,
we'll talk more about those in a minute.
Interviews are a research tool that involve a researcher
or interviewer asking a set of questions
directly to a participant or interviewee.
Interviews collect first hand data, primary research,
about a participant's opinion, belief or preference,
towards whatever context is being questioned.
Usually the information learned is qualitative in nature,
and it's most helpful to understand
the context specific information.
Anything that might make you think,
"We need to go straight to the source to figure that out."
Such as, how do residents living in Pennsylvania
feel about natural gas mining?
Let's say you're trying to market
a new brand of all-natural toothpaste.
Part of your research plan is to understand
how people choose between the already
available brands of toothpaste,
and why they might like an all-natural brand.
What we're looking for is a why.
Why did you buy this brand instead of that?
This is a preference right,
and it's difficult to understand
unless we go straight to the source, so let's go for it.
We head to some major stores ready with questions,
and conduct numerous interviews with toothpaste shoppers.
We found out that our participants
responded positively to the following,
guarantees on the packaging,
bright bold graphics that stood out on the shelf,
special buys and lower prices, flavor, and brand loyalty.
This gives us a sense of why they made their purchase,
and we can use this information to prioritize
marketing for our new brand of toothpaste.
Conducting interviews requires a bit of time and practice
before you'll feel comfortable approaching strangers.
Asking someone you don't know to help you out
by answering a few questions can be
more intimidating than it might seem.
I try to place myself in the shoes
of the person I'm asking for help,
how would I like to be approached,
what kind of tone would I react positively to?
A good way to approach someone is through a quick greeting.
Give an introduction of yourself,
and a brief explanation of your interest
in what they have to say.
Promise it'll be quick, five minutes of less,
and be sure to ask a person if they're
willing to participate before you begin.
Let's go back to our toothpaste example,
and see how I introduced myself.
Hello, my name is Andy,
and I'm working on marketing
a new brand of natural toothpaste.
Would you mind if I asked you a few questions
to help me better understand how you
determine what brand of toothpaste to buy?
I'll need about two to three minutes of your time.
This approach is quick and simple,
and it allows the participant to make a quick easy decision.
Okay, so you have a participant who's willing to talk,
what sort of questions should you ask them?
Generally it's a good idea to use a combination
of open-ended and closed-ended questions.
Remember that open-ended questions allow for
participants to reply with their own response,
while close-ended questions force the participants
to choose their answers from a specified list of options.
I usually like to start an interview
with a few closed questions,
because they're easy to answer
and help get the conversation going.
For example, how often do you shop here?
How much money do you spend a month on dental products?
Do you have a favorite brand of toothpaste?
Once you've gathered some basic data on your participant,
you can then ask them open-ended questions
to help gain a better understanding
of how they choose toothpaste.
A good open-ended question allows the user to
respond without being influenced by your words.
Here's an example, why did you
purchase this brand of toothpaste?
Notice that I'm not suggesting
any possible reasons in my question.
I'm letting the participant come up with her own answer.
Now, a less effectively way to ask this question would be,
describe how effective the
colorful packaging of this brand is.
This question suggests an answer,
the color packaging is effective,
and may influence the way your participant responds.
This is called a leading question.
Sometimes people can give short answers in an interview,
especially if they're a bit uncomfortable.
Therefore it's important that you use some
follow up questions to help get more details,
these are called interview probes.
A good interview probe might sound something like this,
can you tell me more about,
could you please give me another example,
please explain what you mean.
These all ask the participant to give
a little more in their response,
and trust me they can be a real life saver in a pinch.
One thing to look out for,
sometimes your interviewee may go silent,
now these moments of silent can be uncomfortable
especially when you're interacting with someone
for the first time, try not to let it bother you.
A common mistake interviewers make is to try to
break the silence quickly by asking another question.
Give your interviewee some time to reflect and think,
and only follow up with a probe or a new question
if they supply little or no response.
A good interview can generate a lot of valuable data,
and recording this information is very important.
It's very challenging for you the interviewer
to take notes while actively running an interview,
it's also nearly impossible to remember
everything that was said afterwards,
so you should plan on doing one of two things.
You can invite another person along
to take notes during the interview,
or even better record the interview.
There's a number of effective audio recording apps
that you can download for your Smart Phone.
Just remember to ask your participant if it's okay
for you to record them before you begin.
Remember, conducting interviews takes time and practice.
It's important to have a script
of questions ready to be used.
Follow the closed question
open question formula I've given you,
and try to avoid asking leading questions.
Interviews are a powerful tool to help uncover
how and why something is happening.
They're effective for helping to frame a problem,
and they're also a useful tool to gather opinions
and reactions to design prototypes.