{"id":366,"date":"2019-06-28T14:57:25","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T13:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isux\/?p=366"},"modified":"2019-06-28T15:05:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T14:05:50","slug":"how-to-do-user-interviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isux\/2019\/06\/28\/how-to-do-user-interviews\/","title":{"rendered":"How to do user interviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been doing more user interviews here lately for various projects and investigations \u2013 for example for a Discovery Interfaces Review project, and to find out what students think of our study spaces and our response to noise reports in the library.<\/p>\n

I also recently attended a workshop on Advanced Interview Techniques by Danielle Cooper from Ithaka S+R<\/a> at the wonderful User Experience in Libraries \u2013 UXLibsV<\/a> \u2013 conference.<\/p>\n

Although I\u2019m by no means an expert, I want to share some tips and tools you can use to conduct interviews yourself.<\/p>\n

Why do interviews<\/h2>\n

Interviews are a great way to get qualitative<\/strong> insights from your users: what they do and why, how they feel and what they think.<\/p>\n

Because the person is right in front of you, you can follow them if they go on an interesting tangent and you can ask follow up questions (like \u2018What do you mean?\u2019 or \u2018Tell me more about that\u2019) that you can never do in a survey.<\/p>\n

In an interview, you’re not looking for anything quantitative (such as 4 out of the five people we talked to\u2026). The responses you get will not be statistically significant<\/strong>.\u00a0Instead, you will get rich and surprising detail and actionable insights<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What you need<\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. A script of relevant questions (see below).<\/li>\n
  2. Users to talk to. The good news is, you don\u2019t need very many<\/a> (you will get a lot from 5 people).<\/li>\n
  3. A suitable space: quiet, neutral, not too claustrophobic.<\/li>\n
  4. A consent form (Sharepoint, IS staff only)<\/a>, because you\u2019ll want to record them. Don’t try and take notes during the interview (except maybe the odd scribble); you won’t be able to interact properly with the person if you’re looking down and scribbling the whole time.<\/li>\n
  5. A way to record the interview. On your mobile will do. I\u2019ve used Voice Record for iPhone<\/a> which lets me upload the recordings very easily into my DropBox. Next time I\u2019ll try Otter Voice Notes<\/a> (which is available for iOS and Android).<\/li>\n
  6. An account on Otter Voice Notes<\/a>: this does amazing automatic transcripts, which you can share with other people in your project team. You get 600 free minutes per month. The transcripts will be 80-90% accurate, but will need tidying up.<\/li>\n
  7. Staff resource to tidy the transcripts and analyse the data.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What to ask<\/h2>\n

    Be clear on what you want to find out about<\/strong>, and keep your questions relevant to that.<\/p>\n

    Ask about their experience<\/strong>, not their opinion or satisfaction:<\/p>\n