7.2: Interviews

Interviews

One of the most basic approaches to doing user research is the interview. Interviewing may very well be the most difficult of these approaches to research because you need to prepare fully and act with purpose in an interview if you plan to get any sort of useful data out of your time. In this section we’ll cover the goals of an interview, strategies for carrying out an interview, and approaches to recording data from interviews.

Goals of the Interview

When you do an interview, you are getting an unique chance to hear from someone in their own words what they think about a given subject. With that said, the person you’re interviewing also knows this, and sometimes will self-edit to present what they think you’ll want to hear or what sounds like the best choice for a given situation. So, interviews are not without their risks and potholes to avoid.

When you plan an interview, you need to know what you’re hoping to get out of the process. You can’t simply go into an interview and let things develop—you’re going to waste your own time and that of your subject(s). Instead, think about what you want to know. Do you want to know about a specific experience or a particular text? Do you want a broad overview of how a workplace functions? Carefully consider your goals and your scope of questioning. One interview shouldn’t do too much or too little.

Time and timeliness also comes into play with interviews. For example, email interviews are notorious for dragging out into infinity with folks simply ignoring or putting off the interview and questions to spend their time elsewhere. Think about how much time you have and what your schedule looks like. Align the type of interview you want with your goals and your timeline realistically.

Strategies for Carrying Out an Interview

Interviews require a strategy on your part to be effective. Not every interview subject will have the same level of comfort and willingness to share. At the same time, they may not even understand your questions if you pose them in a way that is foreign to their own terminology and understanding.

First and foremost, you want your subject to feel comfortable talking with you. Many times this is a matter of preparing the proper location and the proper setting. Doing an interview in someone’s workplace or workspace in particular can be challenging because the bustle of daily work can interfere with your work and intrude or shorten your interview. Your demeanor and your dress also come into play—you don’t want to be too dressy or too casual compared to your subject. Ideally, you’ll be in the same ballpark or slightly more dressed up on a scale of casual to formal.

Besides location and your demeanor and dress, you’ll also want to consider the way you ask questions as it relates to subject comfort. Your questions shouldn’t be too accusatory or aggressive if you’re wanting to keep your subject comfortable. At the same time, they should not be too personal or sensitive. Many times folks will say more than perhaps they even meant to in an interview setting, and you want to guard against asking questions that prompt them to share things that are too private for the setting. (The same advice usually goes out to teachers who ask for personal essays).

Next, you want to consider your questions and goals. When you ask someone a question in an interview, the question should be crafted to get the information you need. Close-ended questions that terminate with a simple yes or no answer can be self-defeating in this arena because you’re not going to get the valuable insight and elaboration from your subject that you need. Interviews are valuable because you’re getting a very specific set of information about a subject, and a series of yes and no answers is not that.

When crafting questions, try to prompt discussion by your respondent with some direction. You can vary the level of specificity as needed and to keep things fresh. You might ask some entirely open-ended questions like, “What do you think about this document?”. You could also ask fairly specific questions like, “How effective are the headings and subheadings in this document, and how might you change or improve them—if you would change anything at all?”

Remember with questioning that your goal is to get information from the person you’re working with to help you with a particular technical writing project. Write questions with that project in mind and your goals in mind. Don’t waste your time and your interviewees’ time with anything off topic or irrelevant.

Finally, set some standards for your interview from the get-go. Let your subject know what you’re going to discuss, the types of things you’re going to ask, and the length you’re aiming for. That way, they don’t spend their time second-guessing what is coming next or looking at the clock. By being upfront about all of this information you set yourself up for success by making the process itself less of a worry to the person(s) involved.

Approaches to Recording Interviews

It is worth noting that they way you decide to approach an interview’s recording can impact the feel and the response of the interview. You’ll want to make sure your interviewee understands they are being recorded if you make use of any mechanical means to record the conversation. Often you may find that video cameras have a tendency to make folks uncomfortable in a way that an audio recorder does not. In cases where you can’t make use of either of these, you will want to transcribe yourself, noting important information.

If you opt to take your own interview notes, please realize that this is a skill that is built over time. You need to have a real sense of what is important and what is not, as well as a good system for shortening what you need to write down. Practice more than a little before trying this with an actual interview you’re running.

Be aware that if you take the time to note something that happens in the interview and you make notes as if that something is important, you can skew the rest of the interview. Everything you do will impact the way the other party experiences the conversation.

Finally, if you are going to be using anonymous data, you will need to transcribe the interview recordings and anonymize them and then destroy the originals. Voice recordings or video are not anonymous and if you’ve promised that to those you’re working with, you’ll need to make sure to honor that promise.