Expert interviews

We interview (potential) users and/or stakeholders to get insight into their tasks, demands and wishes. At Hike One all designers perform their own research, this way no findings are lost in translation. During an interview we also observe the user to see their emotional response.

We use interviews mostly during the first phase of a project. We use it to get inspiration and as a foundation for (future) design decisions.

We are not a big fan of thick documents. We inform the client short and concise. We tell them what the most important findings are and what findings are unusual. And then of course what we can improve and where there are opportunities.

How it works

1. Determine the main goal of the interviews. e.g. “Learn how target group X deals with Y”.
2. Identify target groups and the number of participants. We don’t interview lots of people, but enough to cover 80% of the information. (3 people for a uniform group, otherwise 5 to 7). We prefer real users, recruited by our client. Invite people 2-4 weeks in advance
3. Write down expectations and questions. Print the questionnaire.
4. Prepare A4 sheets with empty post-its on them for observations (a few per participant) and use a different color post-it per participant. During the test we will write down our finding on these post-its.
5. One session will take between 45-60 minutes. Say hello to your participant, introduce yourself, your notetaker and your company but preferably not the client. Ask permission to record the interview and turn on the recording if they allowed it.
6. Ask the prepared questions, but also try to come up with follow-up questions. The note taker writes down the (short) answers on the post-its. One finding per post-it.
7. We round up after 30 minutes and always leave 5 minutes to ask “Do you have anything to add?” We thank our participant at the end of the interview and give them a small reward.
8. We try to do a quick analysis after each interview. We put the post-its on the wall. If necessary we split the post-its and/or supplement them. We mark the most interesting or important findings (for example with stickers or markers). If we don’t have room on the wall or for a big brown paper, we discuss the three most important findings. We highlight them to remember it later on.
9. When all interviews are finished, we plan a session to analyse all the data. This session will take a couple of hours. We discuss our gut feelings on the findings first. For example:“ I think there are two persona’s” or “I think this is the biggest problem”. We group our post-its to find patterns and then mark the findings we think are useful. Don’t forget to take a picture of your wall!
10. We tell our client briefly how we conducted the interview (with whom, when, how) and we discuss the most important findings.
11. We then translate our findings into personas, user stories, user requirements, journeys or task flows.

Tips

• If possible, it’s best to interview people where they are accustomed to use the product. (This is called contextual interview or contextual inquiry)
• We like to plan our sessions in the right environment, preferably where the product is used. We print our agenda to know who is coming when.
• Collect and prepare hardware and software if relevant.
• Remind yourself that not everything someone says is really how they think or feel.
• If you take photo’s of each step you’ll have a beautiful story of your process.

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