Now, that you've done Safaris and observations, it's time to get into interviews. There's two primary types of interviews. The first one is intercepts and the second one is scheduled. Let's start with intercepts. Intercepts occur in pubic places. Consider this intercept I did in the airport. People were there, they were waiting in line. I took one to five minutes to interview them and ask them questions. Other good places for intercepts include the mall, a train station. What I like about intercepts, it's a very quick way of getting at experience. I like to think of experience as the difference between expectation and performance. So when on this train platform, I might ask the people waiting, who might only be there for five minutes waiting on the train, what was your expectation waiting for the train and how is it performing? And the difference will be the experience that they have waiting on the train. The second type of interview is a scheduled interview. These take place in quiet places and they usually last between 10 and 30 minutes. What are the steps to scheduling an interview? Here are six steps that I like to follow. The first step is list a number of stakeholders. Again, you want to go for breadth and depth. Make sure you've really considered all the different people involved. After you have the different stakeholders, reach out to family and friends to get recommendations and introductions to people who might fill these stakeholder positions. You'll likely find that people are very friendly and willing to talk with you, but you've got to ask in order to see if they're willing to talk. The third step is you're gonna wanna schedule an interview. You wanna be respectful of people's times, usually meeting with them after work or before work at their home is usually a convenient way to schedule interviews. After you schedule the interviews, you're gonna wanna draft your interview guide. Now, what I like to do is draft my interview questions and then try it out with a friend. I like to do this for two reasons. One is, am I asking questions that people can answer or am I asking really difficult questions that are hard to answer? And second, does it fit in the time that I have to interview the person? As I mentioned, scheduled interviews you'll want to last between 10 and 30 minutes. You'll find that people are often willing to talk with you a lot longer, but you don't wanna have more questions than that fit into the 30 minute time frame. And finally, the last step you wanna do is gather competitive products. These are products you'll likely wanna bring along to the interview, to show off to people, get their opinions, and find out what they think of them. It's very helpful to have concrete experiences and products to talk about rather than talking in the abstract. At the start of the interview, you're gonna wanna follow few basic steps. First, you're gonna wanna tell them why you're there and why you're interested in the project. I find it if you tell people why you're interested in the project, what's personally meaningful to you they'll spend a lot more time going into detail answering your questions. If you're passionate about it, they'll respond enthusiastically. Second, you're gonna wanna set the expectations for how long the interview is going to last. So if you told them that it's gonna last 10 minutes, remind them this will just last 10 minutes. Third, you're gonna want to let them know that they're in control. And by this you can say, if I ask you a question you don't feel comfortable answering. Simply say, I don't feel comfortable answering and we'll move on to the next one. It's very important to get honest and critical feedback, that you'd make sure you let the person know that they're in control of the interview and they're not required to answer anything that you ask. In fact, the best situation is by the end when they're controlling it and they're talking and continuing talking and you're just listening to what they have to say. The fourth step is to get permission to record. If you do audio recording or video or cameras, you need explicit permission to record. If they don't give you permission to record, simply take out your notebook and take handwritten notes. That's absolutely fine, you'll still get very good information. And the last and probably most important step is end early. Why do you want to end early? Because you want to respect the people's time whom you are interviewing. Often, they'll ask you to stay longer. They'll insist that you stay longer but you always wanna end early. During the interview, you wanna use a technique called laddering. Laddering is a process of asking why, why, why. The goal is to make explicit connections between the experience and the value that people associate with the experience. Let me give you an example of how laddering works. It's a very powerful technique. Here's an example of the laddering technique. In a project in which we're trying to understand a person's connection and value in the experience of using a computer. So we asked why do you like your computer? And the respondent said, because I like to read the news online. We asked why do you like to read the news online? And the person responding? Because I want to keep up with industry activity. Why do you want to keep up with industry activity? Because it helps me get better at my job. Well, why do you wanna get better at your job? Well, because I wanna be able to support my family. Now, what's fascinating about the laddering technique is you'll notice we started off with something like a computer and eventually we got to the idea of being able to support the family. So the product was just a means for supporting a much deeper need that this person had. Now that we can understand that, we can actually design a computing experience that supports this person in supporting their family rather than just focusing on a piece of hardware that allows them to access the Internet online. Couple things to think about when you're doing the laddering technique is you wanna ask in way that's very respectful. Not, why do you do it that way? But rather, oh that's interesting. Why do you think that way? Why is it that you do that? Taking a naive and curious position is very, very important for doing design research. People will be more honest with you and not feel as if you're judging them. Another thing to bear in mind when you're doing interviews is ask for critiques not compliments. I show you this picture of this very cute kid smiling because it is in our nature to want to please people, to want to smile and tell them that their experiences and the products they've designed are very good. And that's what people naturally do when you engage with them. So you're going to wanna be explicit with people in interviews that you wanna find out what doesn't work for them. What are their pains in a particular situation? And by understanding it intimately understanding the pains you can design better and more meaningful experiences for them. Now that you have your interview set up, your observations and your safari you're gonna wanna bring your design kit with you. Well what goes into a design kit? In my design kit it's pretty simple. I have a small backpack with my camera. My camera happens to be on my phone. Why? Because it takes good enough picture for the pictures that I need. I don't lug around my big camera because it's heavy and uncomfortable. The best camera is the one that you have with you at all times. So bring a camera, bring your notebook for taking notes. And finally, I like to bring a sheet with my research questions on it, so I can be reminded throughout my observation, my safari, and my interviews, what is it that I'm trying to accomplish here? What do I need to know? Next, what do you wear to an interview? Here's a picture of a designer that was interviewing a doctor for a robotic teddy bear. He simply wore what you thought the doctor might wear. The doctor was wearing a button down shirt. He wore a button down shirt and a sweater. The idea is to try and match the person whom you're interviewing. You wanna fit in. You don't wanna be under dressed nor do you wanna be overdressed. Who do you bring along on a research trip? Well I like to go in pairs. Why do I like to go in pairs? Because one person can be talking with a person, asking them questions, while the other person can be recording the notes or taking photographs. I find that it's very useful when you're doing interviews especially, to maintain eye contact with the person. And that's easily done if somebody else is taking notes. Another reason I like to go in pairs when I do research is because I like to figure out afterwards, what did that person see that I didn't see? If you go in pairs, you can bounce ideas off of each other after the interview, or observation or safari is over. After you've done your research, I want you to write your summaries down of your research right away. Aim to do it within 12 hours. Here's a room where I came back and posted a bunch of notes after every interview. This helped me remember details I wouldn't have otherwise remembered as time passed. At times, I've actually finished an interview, gotten back into my car and written up my notes right there in the car so I didn't forget any small details. It's amazing how much you'll forget as time passes. As technology develops, we are able to collect data and collect insights that has such a rapid speed and with such a lower cost than we ever were before. Consider my colleague in Asia who is looking at mobile phone technology. In a single afternoon, she was able to talk to somebody in Europe, in the Americas and in Asia about their opinions all through video technology. I want you to think about this because it's no longer necessary for us to travel across the globe, take months doing research. If we wanna get a global perspective on a particular issue, we can often do it very quickly and write from our own computer. Now this isn't saying that I don't want you to go out and talk to people directly. It's just, I want you to remember that if you need to get a broader perspective, you can often do so using Internet technology. So when do you stop collecting research? The truth is you never do. With every question that you get answered, it often reveals something that you didn't know. So you're gonna constantly be researching throughout the entire design process. The questions will change over time as you'll get more and more familiar with the particular context but you'll still be generating questions, so I want you to always keep the hat of a researcher in mind. Let me illustrate what Intuit does. They do something what I like to call rapid research. In a single week, Intuit will do research, design a new technology, and test that new technology. Based on the feedback from the technology, they'll redesign it and begin the process again the next week. So every week they have a research date set up. The expectation is that they will be doing research every week. They won't always know what the questions are ahead of time but they know they need to do it every week. This comes from a project that I think is just fascinating. They were observing people doing their taxes and noticed, lo and behold people weren't having that much fun. You'll notice in this picture this man's doing his taxes and simultaneously he has his smart phone there. During the research they thought how might we use smart phones to help people do their taxes more easily. They came up with a new system which allows people to take photographs of their forms. That information is updated into the system. And much more of the information is prepopulated, so they don't have to do as much work when doing taxes. This has resulted in a very successful project for them that I think wouldn't have come about unless they had had this rapid research design iterative process. In this lesson, you've learned the importance of getting honest feedback in multiple forms. I hope that you go away, thinking about how is it that I can quickly get my questions answered from real people who are going to use the information and how can I constantly be using the research process throughout.
