- 45 minutes is generally a good amount of time for an interview
- Set your goal for the session and prepare your questions beforehand
- Pair up - have one person lead and one person take notes
- Keep track of time. Give five minutes at the end to wind down, ask the participant whether you’ve missed any important areas.
- If you are holding multiple interviews, using the same questions will make synthesis easier
- Come together afterward, debrief and discuss takeaways
- Send thank you afterward (ideally within a day)
- Have you ever participated in a design research session like this?
- There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, and you can’t offend us — we are simply looking to learn more about your professional experiences
- Privacy: tell your participant how you’ll manage their PII, make sure this is ok with them (for more information about handling PII, read this)
- Say whether you’ll be recording the conversation or not
- We will be taking notes today to keep as an internal reference for our team
- We will not be publishing our notes publicly
- If we want to get a direct quote and attribute it to you for any reason, we will come back to get your approval
- Any questions? Ok, let’s get started!
- Can you tell me a little bit about your company and your role?
- We learned that you use [SYSTEM]. If so, can you briefly describe how you use it?
- How often do you use [SYSTEM]?
- What works well with [SYSTEM]?
- What doesn’t work well with [SYSTEM]?
- Can you give us an example of a time when you were unsure about [SYSTEM] functionality and how you came about resolving it?
- If you had a magic wand and had an opportunity to change [SYSTEM], what would be the one thing you would change?
- Is there anything that you think we should know that we haven’t asked yet?
- Would you be willing to speak to us in-depth about [SYSTEM] in the future via a virtual interview?