In this video, I'll be giving you some tips for the actual interviewing process. You might remember from previous videos that interviewing is both science and art. And much of the science is captured in the preparation for the interviewing itself. The interview protocols are something that, once you've written out and are sure that they're good protocols, you want to try to memorize at least the overall flow of them. So you won't have to constantly review them during the interview itself. But then the interviewing process itself is reasonably improvisational. Even though you have the interview protocol, you'll want to deviate from the script, follow up on interesting ideas that the interview participant might have expressed, and in general, try to maintain a conversational tone. And this is something that's reasonably challenging to do, especially if you've never done an interview before. Let me tell you a story about one of my experiences with interviewing. So this was in part of south India, which was a rural area, and I was doing a project trying to understand how people in a particular village interacted with their digital devices, and so forth. Surprisingly, even in very remote parts of the country, there are a lot of people who have mobile phones. Anyway, I was speaking to one woman, and despite the fact that I had an interpreter with me, and we had been trying to ask her a range of questions. Most of her questions tended to be very short and abrupt, and she was clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation. Of course, it's understandable, here was a complete stranger from not only another part of the country, but another part of the world, asking her all of these intrusive questions. Anyway, I was almost about to give up when I noticed that there was a child running around, and so I started asking her questions about her child. I said, she's a really cute child, how old is she, and so on. And very quickly, her tone and her overall attitude kind of changed. The mother became much more lively, she was obviously excited about talking about her child. And in the process, we established a little bit more rapport, and I felt that we could probably come back to the interview questions. And in fact, we were able to do so soon afterwards, and that was one of the better interviews I had for that set. So one thing to think about when you're doing interviews is, accepting situations where both sides really understand what the interview is for. Also, sometimes in kind of corporate settings, people often understand that everybody wants to get right to business and not waste any time with small talk. But very often with regular users, people that you don't know very well, they'll expect that you'll want to get to know each other a little bit. So I really encourage people to start with a little bit of small talk. I am personally not very good with small talk, so I always have to think about what I could possibly talk about. You can always try to find something in common with the other person. If you are in their place of work, you can look around the office and see if there is anything you recognize, chitchat about that. Of course, it always helps to compliment them about something that they seem to have taken care to do. If they dressed a particular way, or if they have something nice on their desk, that's also something to talk about. And of course you can always discuss the weather, which is really a universal, at least, that's what I've found in my experience. Now, the other thing that you want to do throughout the interview is to really adopt a learning mindset. Remember that you're there to learn as much as you can about this person. And that they probably have something that you have no idea about. In fact, if they don't, it's not really clear why you need to interview anybody at all. So what you really want to do throughout the interview is to maintain this learning mindset, be really open. You want to think of them as the expert because, after all, they are the expert in terms of their own experience, even if they're not an expert with the product that you're discussing. You want to observe, keep your eyes open, keep your ears open for anything that might be out of the ordinary, something that you might not expect. And of course, throughout the interview, you'll need to adapt. Again, the interview protocol is just a guideline for you. And what you really want to do is take that guideline and change it, and improvise as the interview goes forward. Focusing on the most interesting parts of the things that your interview participant says. Listening, of course, is another obvious thing to do, and yet, I find that for many interviewers, this is the hardest part. After all, you have this entire protocol in mind, you're keeping your overarching question also in mind. So there's a whole lot of things you have to keep track of, and on top of that, you're trying to improvise. So it's sometimes really difficult to actually listen, but listening is the thing that causes your interview participant to want to talk. And let me just mention that it's really important to listen. And by the way, did I mention that it's really important to listen? One thing I'll say about listening is that when you do it well, you'll find that interview participants will often open up. Sometimes, the experience for the interview participant is that, for the first time, somebody's actually listening to their experience with a product or service that they might themselves have found a little bit frustrating to use. And so they will often be very open if they find an empathetic ear. Now let me talk about a completely different kind of story. So in the movie Star Wars, the first one, which was episode four, released in the late 70s, Luke Skywalker, the hero, is in a spaceship. And he is tasked with trying to shoot a torpedo down a hole in the Death Star, in the one point of weakness that the Death Star has. Now, because this is an advanced society, they have all kinds of computing technology, and he has this computer that would help him shoot the torpedo into the Death Star. But while he's in the flight, he starts hearing voices from his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. And basically, Obi-Wan Kenobi says, Luke, let go, don't use the computer. You don't need the computer, use the Force. And Luke ultimately complies, and of course, we know how that ends. He was able to successfully shoot the torpedo into the Death Star, and the Death Star explodes. Now, what I want you to understand out of this story is that sometimes, you have to let go of all the preparation that you've done. So that you can achieve the objective of conducting a good interview. Without doubt, advance preparation pays off, so you definitely want to have a good protocol. You want to make sure that the questions that you're asking in the protocol are the right ones for answering the overarching question. But at the same time, you want to think of the protocol during the interview itself as kind of backup. Something that you don't really have to look up, but may have to in case you get stuck, or in case you forget what other questions you might want to ask. And so what you really want to do during the interview is to keep asking follow-up questions based on what your interview participant says. If they say something interesting and unexpected, those are really the threads that you want to follow. And sometimes you'll find that a single topic is interesting enough that you might spend an entire hour discussing just that point. Because your interview participant has a lot to say about that particular issue. In any case, you want to make sure that you are maintaining the conversational tone, again, throughout the interview. And try not to look too much at your interview protocol. Again, if you've done the preparation well, you'll be able to let go, and really try to maintain your attention on the interview participant and what they are saying. Finally, I find that a lot of this is very difficult to think through in a very logical, rational, conscious way. But if you try to maintain an attitude of curiosity, because, after all, what you're really trying to understand is, what is it that this user experiences with the product or service? That might give rise to another new idea, new feature, a new way of designing the product or service, and so on. And so you really want to be curious about their experience. Next, a word about note-taking, so during the interview, you'll definitely want to take notes. I personally encourage you to take notes on paper using pen or pencil. A lot of people these days are very comfortable taking notes on their laptops, and that's okay. But one of the things I find is, for a lot of interview participants, the laptop screen ends up creating a little bit of a mental barrier. And it makes it a little bit harder to establish the rapport that you need with the interview participant. If you do take notes on paper, what you'll want to do is print out the interview protocol with a bunch of blank spaces between the different questions, so that you can have plenty of space to take notes. Now as far as note-taking goes, there's no one correct way to take notes. But some of the things that you might want to try are, first of all, to capture the key points that you hear throughout. Although those are usually things you'll remember, so you really want to capture them in short phrases. Don't spend too much time on those kinds of notes. The other thing that you want to capture are things that audio recording absolutely cannot capture. So different impressions that you might have, facial expressions of the interview participant, the physical context. And also, you might think about writing notes about follow-up questions that were not in the protocol itself. One thing I tend to do after an interview session is to go through the notes immediately afterwards. So that you can get a sense for what exactly happened in the interview. And you'll remember the parts where you deviated from the interview protocol. Note-taking is sufficiently important that I strongly recommend you do it, even if you do have an audio recording as backup. And again, there's no one right way to do this, you'll want to develop your own personal style. But to develop your personal style, you'll have to try several different ways. Now interviewing is a skill, just like anything else. And in particular, it's a skill lot like playing an instrument for music. There's an old joke that says, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? And of course, the answer is, practice, practice, practice. You also want to do the same thing with interviewing. This is a skill just like anything else, and the more you practice, the better you'll get at it. In fact, even though in this course we're asking you only to do two interviews for your user needs assessment. If you can, you might want to try to do as many interviews as you possibly can. Just so that you get better and better at the interviewing process itself. Again, you want to maintain a conversational tone throughout the interview. And you want to do the interview while keeping your overarching question in mind. Again, if you adopt a curious attitude, then you'll find that a lot of the logical suggestions that I'm giving are things that will naturally fall into place, because the curiosity will override everything else. And finally, if you read the module handouts, there are extra links and tips for how to conduct a good interview. Interviewing is, on the one hand, very simple to understand as a concept, but it can be very challenging to master. So I recommend doing as much of it as you can.
