While we know, from a very young age, how to ask questions, the skill of getting the right information from users is surprisingly complex and nuanced. This session will focus on getting past the obvious shallow information into the deeper, more subtle, yet crucial, insights. If you are going to the effort to meet with users in order to improve your designs, it's essential that you know how to get the best information and not leave insights behind. Being great in "field work" involves understanding and accepting your interviewee's world view, and being open to what they need to tell you (in addition to what you already know you want to learn). We'll focus on the importance of rapport-building and listening and look at techniques for both. We will review different types of questions, and why you need to have a range of question types. This session will explore other contextual research methods that can be built on top of interviewing in a seamless way. We'll also suggest practice exercises for improving your own interviewing skills and how to engage others in your organization successfully in the interviewing experience.

1. Diving Deep: Best Practices For Interviewing Users Don’t miss the accompanying audio! #DeepDive Steve Portigal

2. Portigal Consulting is a bite-sized California firm that helps companies discover and act on new insights about their customers and themselves

3. The research and design process Plan Interview Analyze/ Synthesize Design Implement Today’s focus

4. Today’s focus The research and design process Plan Interview Design Implement Analyze/ Synthesize

5. Typical development lifecycle What to make or do Refine & prototype Launch Iterate & improve

6. Interviewing through the development cycle Take a fresh look at people What to make or do Refine & prototype Launch Iterate & improve

7. Interviewing through the development cycle Use existing ideas as hypotheses What to make or do Refine & prototype Launch Iterate & improve

8. Interviewing through the development cycle What to make or do Refine & prototype Launch History provides context to explore new ideas Iterate & improve

9. Four deceptively simple tactics Questions without answers Natural language Silence 1 Silence 2

10. Tactic #1: Natural language Talk like your subject talks!

11. Tactic #2: Questions without answers Don’t give away the answers you are looking for

12. After you ask your question, be silent Tactic #3: Silence 1

13. After they’ve answered you, be silent Tactic #4: Silence 2

14. Fieldwork principle Let go of your perspective Embrace their perspective Let go, Luke!

15. A failure to embrace (1 of 2) Client: So the concept of transferring, burning, and syncing, can you talk a little about those three concepts? So transfer, burn, and sync. Just do you understand the difference? Interviewee: Transfer, burn, sync. Burn is when I’m actually putting it onto some kind of disc. Okay… Transferring is I guess when I transfer the files from one place to the other. Mm-hmm… Whether it’s to a device or to a different drive or whatever or into the program I guess. And syncing, well, I know the phone always comes up and says it’s syncing, when it’s syncing up to the files or syncing up to the computer or stuff like that. That’s the only time I think I’ve ever really heard that. (cont’d)

16. A failure to embrace (2 of 2) Client: So the only other question I have left in this area is: Would you expect to manually decide what music goes on your devices or would you rather that the machine does it for you? Interviewee: Decide what I want on my…? Let’s say your library is here on this machine, and you have a device, would you want it to put as much as it could put on from the library from the device when it’s connected to your computer? If I could hold it… if the device itself could actually hold all the files, I would love that, if it automatically… Just knew. Just knew that it wasn’t on there, the same thing when…what do you call it - when I have to go into the program and actually have it… downl…uhh, now I’m confused in what I should call it. No, no, don’t worry about it!

18. No rushed commute

20. Building rapport, the soft skill

23. Otherwise, think “OMG! Me too!” without saying itThere’s a visceral tipping point where interviews shift from a back-and-forth question/answer/ question/answer exchange to question/story. That’s how rapport-building pays off.

24. Listening is the rapport engine Don’t interrupt! Be silent (see Tactics 3 and 4) Maintain eye contact Head-nodding and mm-hmm Acknowledgement phrases: “I see” Your mm-hmms can be frustrating when editing interview video, but leading a great interview is more important, so intermediate interviewers should just let ‘er rip.

25. Listening body language Yes! Not so much.

27. “Earlier, you told us that…”

29. Find your personal style The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

31. It does come in handy during freeze-up moments

36. Server closet

37. Form storage

38. Key blank cabinet

39. Face of participant

40. Participant in front of their cars

42. Types of questions

43. Types of questions

44. Types of questions

45. Why so many types of questions? Real interviews aren’t as simple as asking a question, getting an answer, and then moving onto the next question in your list. You are unlikely to get to the actual answer without asking a few different questions a few different ways. You need a range of tools and techniques. And you need to feel when you haven’t got to the real answer yet so you can keep going.

46. Prepare for exploding questions Well, my cousin never tells me when she has an updated bank balance so I figured I would handle it myself. That’s why I signed up for the PayPal service, I think it’s them but maybe not. Coping techniques Wait until these issues come up organically, without you having to ask Make notes on your field guide about what you want to loop back to so you don’t forget Triage based on what’s most pressing for your topic Triage based on what makes the best follow-up, to demonstrate listening Why does this matter? Let’s find out what service this is?! Okay. I decided I had to spend the money I had from last month in order to save month’s money and this service was going to help me do that. Even if it’s not the same password that my cousin would be using I don’t understand her financial model… Why does she expect that it would be the same?

47. Managing others in the field Client: So, really interesting the sort of things that you as old Derek used to value, such as efficiency of time, and some of those things have now influenced the new Derek. Derek: Right. Steve: Maybe that sort of begs a larger question…We’ve offered you this idea of old versus new you, but how do you think about this transition? Derek:Yeah, I don’t really see it.

49. Getting better at interviewing Practice with hallway or other serendipitous micro-interviews Write surveys and participant screeners to practice crafting questions out of the moment How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, man, practice!

50. Participant screeners as asking practice A good way to practice both framing a question and the empathic exercise of thinking through the respondent’s user experience with that question

51. Write and take surveys Develop your own critical eye (and interviewer’s voice) by looking for bad examples and identifying just what’s wrong with them

52. We learn from mistakes and mishaps Collect and share war stories with other interviewers THANX 4 NOTHING KITTEH

53. Coming in 2012! A book by Steve Portigal The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/user-interviews/

54. Thank you! Portigal Consulting www.portigal.com @steveportigal steve@portigal.com 415-894-2001