User interviews are a great technique for getting to know your target audience. But sometimes people just don’t know how to articulate what they need, want, or feel. We’ll discuss how to use projective techniques, such as image associations, collaging, sentence completion, and others to uncover hidden, actionable insights to fuel your designs.

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Going Deep
Uncovering Hidden Insights Through User Interviews
Susan Mercer
Experience Research Director
Mad*Pow

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Don’t play the notes on
the page…
play the music.
“
”

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Don’t read the notes on the page…
have a conversation.“
”

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Consider the participant’s
perspective.
Why does she
want to talk
with me?
Do I know
enough? Will I
sound stupid?
What will she
think about
me?

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Social Desirability Bias
60% of people lied an
average of 3 times in a
10 minute conversation
with someone they just
met.
* Feldman, R.S., Forrest, J.A., and Happ, B. R. (2002) Basic and
Applied Social Psychology, 24(2), 163-170.

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Getting to the Honest Truth
• Set the stage
• Be your curious self
• Listen and accept
• Ask questions in unique ways

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Set the Stage
• Be transparent
• Give them permission to be honest
• Ask for their help

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Be Your Curious Self
•Be genuinely curious
•Be human

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Listen and Accept
“People speak in paragraphs”
– Steve Portigal

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Ask Questions in Unique Ways
• Don’t put the participant on the
defensive
• Use indirect questioning to get
to tough questions
• Not “Why didn’t you…”
• “What kept you from…”

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Recognition vs. Recall
•Our brains store
information in
networks
•Use techniques to
make it easy for
people to recall topics

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Methods to Try
•Open-Ended Exploration
•Sentence Completion
•Collaging
•Laddering
•Triading

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Open-Ended Exploration
•Start Broad
•Learn what they think is
important

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Sentence Completion
•Focused, yet open-ended
•Good topic starter
•Clues to dive deeper

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Sentence Completion
•If I used this all day, I would…
•Using this app, makes me feel…
•Compared to other websites, this site is…

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Collaging
•Provide images & supplies
•Set focus topic
•Give them 15-20 mins
•Triggers recognition

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Story Telling About Pictures
•Have them tell their story
•Great way to uncover
topics important to them
•Use when you don’t know
what questions to ask

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The Power of the
Story

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Triading
•Compare 3 things
•Uncover important
dimensions
•Tell the story
•Repeat

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Triading Example
•How are two of these different from the third?

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Triading Follow-Up
•Tell the story behind the differences
•Which is more important to them?
•A and B share a characteristic
•C is the only one that has a characteristic

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Laddering
•Iterative questions
•Laddering gets to values that
people can’t articulate well  Why?
 Why?
 Why?
 Why?

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Laddering Example
• What is the most important feature on
this pizza ordering app?
• Why are deals and coupons important to
you?
• What is it about saving money that is
important to you?
• Why is it important to save for their
college funds?
• Deals and Coupons
• Because I like to save money, and not
have my wife yell at me
• We are trying to save as much as we can
for the kids’ college funds
• Education is expensive, but important. I
want my kids to have better jobs than I
do
Interviewer Participant

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Summary of Methods
What is important
to participants
Uses Recall to
access
memories
Use
Recognition to
access
memories
Assists
articulation
Open Ended
Exploration
X X
Sentence
Completion
X X X
Collaging X X X
Triading X X
Laddering X X X

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Summary
•Encourage participants to be honest
•Build trust – be yourself
•Use soft questions for tough topics
•Be creative with techniques

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Have Fun!
Thank You
Susan Mercer
Experience Research Director
Mad*Pow
smercer@madpow.com