Outline of a Needs-Finding Interview
Preparation
- This is a semi-structured interview. You should have questions prepared - and get answers to them - but the questions are meant only as a starting point for your discussion. Be sure to follow interesting leads, ask for elaboration or clarification, etc.. Pay attention to the person’s nonverbal cues as well (e.g., facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses, and follow up on those as appropriate.
- In writing your questions, use the WH Question Matrix as a guide. They are very generic, so try to adapt the questions to be specific to your topic.
- One or two team members should conduct the interview. If doing it solo, try to record the interview (with permission; see below). It’s best not to try to take notes while running an interview, because it tends to break the flow. If you have two people, assign one person as the interviewer and the other as note-taker. You may still want to record the interview.
- When scheduling the interview, ask the person in advance if they are comfortable with your recording it, and whether video + audio is OK, or just audio.
- Plan for 30 min to 1 hour. Tell the person in advance how much of their time you would like, and be sure to respect that during the interview. Of course, some people like to talk so if you’re getting to the end of your allotted time and they are still talking, it’s polite to say something like, “We’re almost out of time, so we should wrap up so I don’t take too much of your time. Unless you want to keep going, in which case we can.” (assuming you also have the time to spare). But be sure to respect the person’s time and don’t try to go overtime just because you have more questions, if they are not OK with it.
- It’s also useful to book 15-30 min of your own time right after the interview to review the notes (if they were taken during the meeting), and/or jot down notes of your own from memory. You can review the whole recording later and take more detailed notes, if you want, but it’s very useful to jot down impressions while they’re fresh in your head.
Tools
- Communicating with people to interview: use whatever medium people prefer. Email is often fine, but you may find some people prefer the phone. Speaking is more natural than typing, after all!
- Conducting the interviews: you can use Teams for video meetings.
- You can schedule a Teams meeting using the Calendar tab in Teams (along the left side icon bar), then clicking “New meeting”. Add as attendees the person you are inviting (who doesn’t need to have a dal.ca address) and any other team member who will participate (e.g., note taker). Your invitees will receive an email invitation with the date and time, and a link to the Teams meeting.
- You can record Teams meetings, once you have started them, by going to the “More actions” (…) icon and selecting “Start recording” from the dropdown menu. The recording will be saved in the Files tab associated with that meeting on Teams.
- Taking notes: use whatever is most natural to you, be it a notebook or electronic document. Be sure your notes are clearly labelled with a way of identifying the person (make up a pseudonym - a fake name - if the person doesn’t consent to your using their name with your team mates), and the date.
- Tracking your interviews: If you use Notion, you can create a “User Research” tracker using their template. This allows you to track your interviews (booked and completed), and keep track of all the necessary information from your interviews: names, dates, contact info, who interviewed them, and your notes. This is an ideal way of keeping everything in one place, that’s shared with your teammates. You can use this for “live” note taking during the interview, or copy/make notes here later. Alternatively, common tools like Excel and Word could be used, can you could use the course Teams site to share these with your team.
Privacy and ethics
While you are conducting needs-finding research, this is not research that falls under the oversight of the university’s research ethics board. The Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans – TCPS 2 (2018) defines research as, “…an undertaking intended to extend knowledge through a disciplined inquiry and/or systematic investigation. The term “disciplined inquiry” refers to an inquiry that is conducted with the expectation that the method, results and conclusions will be able to withstand the scrutiny of the relevant research community.” The interviews you are conducting are much “softer” than this: they are not “disciplined inquiry” nor are they systematic investigation.
That said, you are absolutely expected to conduct your interviews in an ethical way, consistent with the TCPS. This includes the principles that consent is required, will be given voluntarily by the person you’re interviewing, and can be withdrawn by them at any time. In other words, you should explain what you will use the interview for, and that they are free to stop the interview at any time, and/or not answer questions that they are not comfortable answering. You should not coerce anyone into an interview, nor interview someone who you are in a position of authority over (because coercion could be implied).
Recording your interviews is recommended, but not required. If you do so, you need to communicate clearly to the person that you will record the interview, and obtain their consent (verbal consent is fine). If they refuse to be recorded, you must respect that and just take notes. If you do record the interview, you should keep the recording private to only your team members and the teaching team, and you should inform the person you’re interviewing of this, and reassure them that no one else will see the interview. It is your responsibility to ensure that privacy is respected: ensure that recordings are not saved or copied anywhere that is accessible by people other than your team, and delete the interview whenever you’re done with it. You may wish to use an automated transcription service to transcribe the interview. However, read the terms of use of any such service carefully, and do not use any service that would retain a copy of the audio or text of the interview, unless you explicitly obtained permission from teh person you interviewed for this. Note that if you conduct your interview over Teams, you can get automated transcription that adheres to Dalhousie’s privacy regulations.
Finally, you must respect the privacy of the person you’re interviewing. Do not share their name or any identifying information with anyone outside your team, and do not share any information from the interview that could identify them. If you are using a pseudonym for them, ensure that you do not use their real name in any notes or documents that you share with anyone outside your team.
Running a Successful Interview
1. Introduction & Warm-up
- Start by introducing yourself and thanking the person for their time. Remind them why you’re conducting the interview, that they are free to not answer questions if they don’t want to, and to end the interview at any time. If you are recording, remind them and ensure you have their consent. Assure them that you are trying to learn more and that there are no “right” or “wrong” answers to your questions.
- Ensure that you are making the person feel comfortable, and that you are communicating respect and gratitude for their time.
- Start with some simple questions like name, and some background as appropriate (e.g., job title, or current life stats like “retired”)
2. Actual beginning
- Move into your key interview questions, starting with relatively broad and easy ones around your topic. Your questions should identify the topic you’re aiming to learn more about.
- At this point, you are continuing to build trust and get the person comfortable with the interview. Try to build rapport - use active listening to feed back to the person (i.e., repeat, or paraphrase) some key points of what they are saying. This shows you’re attending and understanding, and allows them the opportunity to correct you if you’re misunderstanding. It helps build trust.
3. Walk in their shoes
- At certain points in the interview, you might realize that you’re getting great insights, or you may identify a topic that you want to dig a bit deeper on. This is a great opportunity to go deeper to understand the situation better.
- Remember, you’re trying to identify real pain points - problems that are worth solving, as well as information that will help you develop solutions. So when you feel you’re encountering a potential idea, ask for more details, and try to get more of a sense of the experience through the other person’s eyes.
- Another useful technique is active listening — paraphrasing back to them what you (think you) hear them saying, and/or how that makes them feel. This conveys to the person that you are hearing them, and helps build trust. It can also be beneficial in identifying points where you actually misunderstood the person, giving them the opportunity to clarify.
- Asking for more details or a “walk through” of the situation (as appropriate) can be useful techniques. Don’t push their boundaries, however. It is important to continue to build trust, and be respectful even if the person’s boundaries or values are different from your own.
4. Cover ground
- If you have a lot of questions prepared, you might find that they cluster around a few areas or topics. It’s helpful to organize your questions by these categories.
- When doing the interview, you can try to cover all the categories, but not necessarily all the questions in every category - especially if you find yourself running short on time. So keep an eye on the time and make sure you ask all your most important questions.
- You can use more of the questions in one category if you find those are eliciting particularly useful answers.
5. Review
- Keep an eye on the clock, and save 10 minutes at the end to review and wrap up. This is important because sometimes key insights come after it feels like the “interview part” is over.
- Roughly 10 minutes before the end of the interview, lead into a review of the interview by saying something like, “This has been great, but we’re almost out of time and I don’t want to take more of your time than you offered. So let me go over some points here and make sure I have them accurately.” Then summarize the most interesting or key insights you feel you got from the interview. This gives the person the opportunity to correct you or elaborate, and may trigger other thoughts or insights.
- Try to keep this to about 5 minutes.
6. Wrap-up
- In the last 5 minutes, bring the interview to a close.
- Thank the person for their time and insights, and ask them if they have any questions for you. Finally, ask them if they can think of 2-3 other people who might be interesting for you to interview. If they’re willing, you might want to get the contact information then, or follow up after with an email. Also respect the fact that some people might rather ask the other person for permission before they refer you.
After the Interview
Review
- Hang up.
- Ideally you’ve blocked off some time immediately after the interview to review or make notes. Your memory will be freshest right after the fact, so it’s the best time to make a quick summary. This summary doesn’t need to be comprehensive — instead, try to jot down the key takeaways or insights you got from teh interview. But then put it aside, and do a full review later before reporting to your team.
- If you didn’t take notes during the interview, watch the recording later and make notes.
- Review your notes.
- Try to identify a few themes that came out of the interview - topics or problems that the person spent a lot of time talking about.
- Also see how many of the questions in the WH Question Matrix you can answer from the interview.