Diving Deep: <br />Best Practices
For Interviewing Users <br />Don’t miss the accompanying audio!<br />#DeepDive<br />Steve Portigal<br />

Portigal Consulting is a bite-sized
California firm that helps companies discover and act on new insights about their customers and themselves<br />

The research and design process<br
/>Plan<br />Interview<br />Analyze/ <br />Synthesize<br />Design<br />Implement<br />Today’s focus<br />

Today’s focus<br />The research and
design process<br />Plan<br />Interview<br />Design<br />Implement<br />Analyze/ <br />Synthesize<br />

Typical development lifecycle<br />What to
make or do<br />Refine & prototype<br />Launch<br />Iterate & improve<br />

Interviewing through the development cycle<br
/>Take a fresh look at people<br />What to make or do<br />Refine & prototype<br />Launch<br />Iterate & improve<br />

Interviewing through the development cycle<br
/>Use existing ideas as hypotheses<br />What to make or do<br />Refine & prototype<br />Launch<br />Iterate & improve<br />

Interviewing through the development cycle<br
/>What to make or do<br />Refine & prototype<br />Launch<br />History provides context to explore new ideas<br />Iterate & improve<br />

Four deceptively simple tactics<br />Questions
without answers<br />Natural language<br />Silence 1<br />Silence 2<br />

Tactic #1: Natural language<br />Talk
like your subject talks!<br />

Tactic #2: Questions without answers<br
/>Don’t give away the answers you are looking for<br />

After you ask your question,
be silent<br />Tactic #3: Silence 1<br />

After they’ve answered you, be
silent<br />Tactic #4: Silence 2<br />

Fieldwork principle<br />Let go of
your perspective<br />Embrace their perspective<br />Let go, Luke!<br />

A failure to embrace (1
of 2)<br />Client: So the concept of transferring, burning, and syncing, can you talk a little about those three concepts? So transfer, burn, and sync. Just do you understand the difference?<br />Interviewee: Transfer, burn, sync. Burn is when I’m actually putting it onto some kind of disc.<br />Okay…<br />Transferring is I guess when I transfer the files from one place to the other.<br />Mm-hmm…<br />Whether it’s to a device or to a different drive or whatever or into the program I guess. And syncing, well, I know the phone always comes up and says it’s syncing, when it’s syncing up to the files or syncing up to the computer or stuff like that. That’s the only time I think I’ve ever really heard that.<br />(cont’d)<br />

A failure to embrace (2
of 2)<br />Client: So the only other question I have left in this area is: Would you expect to manually decide what music goes on your devices or would you rather that the machine does it for you?<br />Interviewee: Decide what I want on my…?<br />Let’s say your library is here on this machine, and you have a device, would you want it to put as much as it could put on from the library from the device when it’s connected to your computer?<br />If I could hold it… if the device itself could actually hold all the files, I would love that, if it automatically…<br />Just knew.<br />Just knew that it wasn’t on there, the same thing when…what do you call it - when I have to go into the program and actually have it… downl…uhh, now I’m confused in what I should call it.<br />No, no, don’t worry about it!<br />

Before you start doing interviews,
do a team-wide brain dump of all your assumptions and expectations<br />Go to where your users are rather than asking them to come to you<br />Don’t dress like you are going to work<br /><ul><li>No logo clothing (especially for consumers)</li></ul>Arrive relaxed<br /><ul><li>Well fed

No rushed commute

Your bathroom needs taken care
of</li></ul>Make the interview about the interview<br /><ul><li>Agree explicitly that you are going to Learn about Paul rather than Identify NextGen Opportunities for Roadmap</li></ul>Be comfortable asking questions you (think you) know the answers to<br />HOWTO let go<br />Sometimes the unpredictable and “real” nature of interviews will ensure that you do indeed let go<br />

Building rapport, the soft skill<br
/>

Building rapport, the soft skill<br
/>You can think of rapport as the energy that makes for a fantastic interview that all parties are enthused about during and after<br />It’s your responsibility to build this rapport<br />Be selective about social graces<br /><ul><li>Too little small talk is rude

Too much small talk is
confusing since this isn’t a social call</li></ul>Be selective about talking about yourself<br /><ul><li>Reveal personal information to give them permission to share

Otherwise, think “OMG! Me too!”
without saying it</li></ul>There’s a visceral tipping point where interviews shift from a back-and-forth question/answer/ question/answer exchange to question/story. That’s how rapport-building pays off.<br />

Listening is the rapport engine<br
/>Don’t interrupt!<br />Be silent (see Tactics 3 and 4)<br />Maintain eye contact<br />Head-nodding and mm-hmm<br />Acknowledgement phrases: “I see”<br />Your mm-hmms can be frustrating when editing interview video, but leading a great interview is more important, so intermediate interviewers should just let ‘er rip.<br />

Listening body language<br />Yes!<br />Not
so much.<br />

Expert listening<br />You can demonstrate
that you are listening by asking questions!<br /><ul><li>Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up

“Earlier, you told us that…”

“I want to go back
to something else you said…”</li></ul>Signal your transitions: “Great, now I’d like to move onto a totally different topic”<br />This level of listening is not how we normally talk to each other<br /><ul><li>Remember that you are interviewing, not having a friendly chat</li></ul>This is really hard<br />

Find your personal style<br />The
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator<br />

The interview guide (or field
guide)<br />A more-than-you-can-ask set of questions<br />Share with team to align on issues of concern<br /><ul><li>Especially with multiple teams in the field</li></ul>Helps you pre-visualize the flow of the session<br /><ul><li>Include questions as well as other methods that you’ll use</li></ul>Prepping an interview guide means that you may not need to use the interview guide<br /><ul><li>This is counter-intuitive

It does come in handy
during freeze-up moments

Scan it over to see
what else you want to cover</li></li></ul><li>

Also include in the plan<br
/>Observations to cover<br /><ul><li>E.g.: Look at fridge contents, beverage storage, and recycling locations</li></ul>A shot list, which could include:<br /><ul><li>Entrance lobby

Server closet

Form storage

Key blank cabinet

Face of participant

Participant in front of their
cars

Action shot of us doing
the interviews</li></li></ul><li>Include other methods<br />

Types of questions<br />

Types of questions<br />

Types of questions<br />

Why so many types of
questions?<br />Real interviews aren’t as simple as asking a question, getting an answer, and then moving onto the next question in your list. <br />You are unlikely to get to the actual answer without asking a few different questions a few different ways. <br />You need a range of tools and techniques. And you need to feel when you haven’t got to the real answer yet so you can keep going.<br />

Prepare for exploding questions<br />Well,
my cousin never tells me when she has an updated bank balance so I figured I would handle it myself. That’s why I signed up for the PayPal service, I think it’s them but maybe not.<br />Coping techniques<br />Wait until these issues come up organically, without you having to ask<br />Make notes on your field guide about what you want to loop back to so you don’t forget<br />Triage based on what’s most pressing for your topic<br />Triage based on what makes the best follow-up, to demonstrate listening<br />Why does this matter?<br />Let’s find out what service this is?!<br />Okay.<br />I decided I had to spend the money I had from last month in order to save month’s money and this service was going to help me do that. Even if it’s not the same password that my cousin would be using<br />I don’t understand her financial model…<br />Why does she expect that it would be the same?<br />

Managing others in the field<br
/>Client: So, really interesting the sort of things that you as old Derek used to value, such as efficiency of time, and some of those things have now influenced the new Derek.<br />Derek: Right.<br />Steve: Maybe that sort of begs a larger question…We’ve offered you this idea of old versus new you, but how do you think about this transition?<br />Derek:Yeah, I don’t really see it.<br />

Managing others in the field<br
/>We lead a thirty-minute training session for everyone who will join us in the field<br />Ensure one person leads the interview and clarify the role of the “second interviewer”<br /><ul><li>They should ask questions, but stay in the “chapter” that we’re in</li></ul>During our debriefs, we offer feedback and coaching about the process, if possible<br />

Getting better at interviewing<br />Practice
with hallway or other serendipitous micro-interviews<br />Write surveys and participant screeners to practice crafting questions out of the moment <br />How do you get to Carnegie Hall?<br />Practice, man, practice!<br />

Participant screeners as asking practice<br
/>A good way to practice both framing a question and the empathic exercise of thinking through the respondent’s user experience with that question<br />

Write and take surveys<br />Develop
your own critical eye (and interviewer’s voice) by looking for bad examples and identifying just what’s wrong with them<br />

We learn from mistakes and
mishaps<br />Collect and share war stories with other interviewers<br />THANX 4 NOTHING KITTEH<br />

Coming in 2012!<br />A book
by Steve Portigal<br />The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing<br />http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/user-interviews/ <br />

Thank you!<br />Portigal Consulting<br />www.portigal.com<br
/>@steveportigal<br />steve@portigal.com<br />415-894-2001<br />