Using the interview method to develop IT products: is it possible to conduct qualitative research on your own?
In previous articles, we talked about how and in what cases qualitative methods are used to develop IT products. The logical question is: is it possible to conduct a qualitative study yourself? Read articles, listen to lectures, attend a master class and go forward, in the field - to observe and interview. Why not?
In an ideal world, qualitative research is carried out by specialists armed with the necessary skills and competencies. Sociologists, social anthropologists, psychologists - all of them have been studying for years how to conduct such research, develop tools, collect and analyze qualitative data. Have the opportunity to hire a specialist? Do this, and do not need independent experiments. Why? The risk of getting poor-quality data is too high: irrelevant to the goals and objectives of the project, insufficiently detailed or completely meaningless (yes, this also happens).
And if there is no possibility? We understand. For example, budget constraints. Or it is not clear where to find the right specialist and how to evaluate his qualifications. The input data and motivation are secondary, the main thing is that you decided to do the research yourself. To be honest, the idea is quite risky. The specialist’s support will reduce the risk - he will help develop the toolkit, conduct preliminary briefing and advise on the course of field work. Yes, this is not a completely independent study, but we want to get a normal result.
Of course, this will not completely save you from problems and difficulties in working with the methodology. We will talk about these problems and difficulties using the example of working with the basic qualitative method - an interview. It is better to start with him - the method of observation is more complicated and often includes interviews. Interviews allow you to get qualitative data about users used to make decisions on a product at the stage of its development or modification.
')
This article will be helpful:
What is an interview? It seems to be a simple conversation, what can be so complicated here? We find the user and talk with him about our product. Special training is not needed here. Unfortunately, things are not as simple as they seem. One of the tasks of the researcher, for example, is to create an atmosphere of easy communication. Here experience and communication skills are important. Ideally, the respondent forgets that he is giving an interview. And the researcher? The researcher, on the contrary, remembers that he does not just speak, but collects valuable information for the work of the project team. And this is the key difference between the interview and the conversation.
Despite the similarities with the conversation, an interview is a way to get the necessary data about users. This is the way to perceive this method: conversation is only an outer shell. The collected data will be used to solve specific product problems - the development of a new IT service, mobile application, professional interface, etc. Your project team has its own information needs: examine life situations, understand user behavior, test the hypotheses put forward, or get valuable insight to develop a new product. And here the difficulties begin.
Usually there are a lot of such questions. Forgot about them during the interview? Received substandard data for the team. And it is easy to forget - lack of experience, stress at the first interview, a silent or overly talkative respondent. What can be done? Solve the problem helps guide interview (from the English. Interview guide). This is a printed tip for the interviewer, containing a list of topics, key and additional questions for their disclosure. Simple, but effective solution. Without a guide for the interview is better not to take. Especially if you have no experience.
How is the interview guide created? First, the bad news - there is no ready-made guide for all occasions. A unique tool is created for each project, taking into account the purpose and objectives of the project, the information needs of the team, product features, use environment, etc. Although there are also common questions of a general nature, for example, the digital habits of users. Over time, you will form your block of standing questions, but you will have to forget about the universal guide forever.
Despite the uniqueness of the tool, a few general tips can still be given.
What gives us the use of guide? Guide sets the structure of the conversation, but does not set hard boundaries for the interviewer. How does it look in practice? The respondent raised an important topic for research that you did not take into account in the guide. You do not interrupt the respondent, discuss this topic with him, and then return to the structure of the guide. That is why such interviews are called semi-structured. Guide does not oblige you to literally reproduce the wording of the questions - look at the situation of the dialogue, the experience of the respondent, the style of communication and choose the options that are most understandable to the interlocutor. At the same time, it is better for beginners to adhere to the structure of the guide and check the list of topics and questions more often.
How to work with guide? The presence of the guide does not guarantee that the interview will take place perfectly. Here, research experience, communication skills, and, in fact, the ability to work with a guide are important. The first and second purchase with the help of the article will not work, but on the work with the guide you can give a few recommendations.
These tips will help you effectively use the guide during the interview, especially if this is a new experience for you.
Of course, creating a guide is not an easy task. Time to create it depends on the amount of information needs, requirements for data depth, the complexity of the topic. For example, when developing a new IT product, a more complex guide is needed - it will take longer to create. After the first interviews (pilotage) it may be necessary to finalize the guide, this is a normal practice. Qualitatively made, tested on pilotage guide - a good help for the interviewer. However, the development of such a guide should still be done by experienced researchers.
Thus, the novice guide allows you to solve several of the most pressing problems:
Let's move from the toolkit to whoever will work with it - the interviewer. A hot topic for newbies is the interviewer's fears. Even an experienced interviewer may be scared when working on a complex, sensitive topic. There are two types of fear factors:
Are there any such situations? Of course there are! Although not as often as it seems to a newbie. Most people are ready to meet, if you clearly explain why you need this information. We will talk about how to do this.
Before starting the study, you need to come up with a story that is available - this is important! - the form explains the reason for your appeal to the interlocutor. Such a story is called a legend. Despite its name, the legend must be true - you should not lie to people, turning to them for help. Legends, like guides, are different for different projects. Here are some tips for preparing them.
Literate understandable legend reduces the risk of failure to participate in the interview. Remember, people will talk to you if you clearly explain why you and they need it.
Now let's talk about the refusal to answer specific questions during an interview. This happens when it comes to sensitive or simply complex issues. A few tips to ensure that such situations occur less frequently or are overcome with minimal loss.
Only experience will help to completely overcome fears, but the tips given above will help reduce the risk of situations when the respondent refuses to participate in the study or does not want to answer specific questions.
Let us turn to the circumstances of the interview itself and discuss one of the most serious mistakes of a novice, which can eliminate all efforts to develop a guide. During the interview, it may seem to you that you are on the same wavelength with the respondent - you perfectly understand his situation, motives and actions. This is one of the most dangerous illusions for the researcher. It is easy for her to succumb, for example, when discussing ordinary everyday activities, which everyone should do the same. What could be special there? Or if you are a professional and well versed in the subject. Here your knowledge can play a cruel joke with you, creating the illusion of understanding another person.
Why is this a problem? Let's see what the result gives you an interview. Your task is to get the story (or stories) of the respondent, which describes:
A good guide is designed to receive such stories - with the help of questions from the guide, the interviewer pushes the respondent to a detailed story. What happens if you are convinced that you fully understand the motives and actions of the respondent? Will you try to reveal all the details of the story? Not. Even if you have a guide. You will be so sure of the correctness of your own estimates that some of the questions from the guide may seem unnecessary. The result of this confidence is poor-quality data that you bring to your team. And she will use this data to make specific decisions on the product.
Let's take the axiom: you do not know what, how and why the other person does. That is why you came to him and conduct research. With this approach, it will be easier for you to conduct interviews, and the quality of data will improve. Your main question during the interview is “why?”. Ask it as often as possible - it allows you to uncover a person's motivation, reproduce the logic of his actions, understand the attitude to the situation. Do not be afraid to seem silly when asking this question. Remember, your task is to get a detailed story. More “why?” And fewer questions that can only be answered with “yes” or “no”.
So you did an interview. Is the study complete? Not. Depending on which method of fixing the information you have chosen, you have a notepad or voice recorder on your hands. Now you have to transform the results into text - you need to take time right away. Getting text from notes in a notebook is easier and faster, but during the interview you will have to be distracted by the notes and quickly decide what is important and what is not. If you choose a voice recorder, then you have an audio file that you need to decrypt. It is monotonous and long work.
How to start a newbie? We recommend using a voice recorder at first so that nothing prevents you from concentrating during a conversation. In addition, listening to your own recording and fixing the answers is a good bug fix. You will immediately see where you did not ask clarifying questions, did not reveal the story, or missed an interesting new topic. For this reason, it is better to do the texts on the first interviews right away - this will help avoid repeating mistakes in the following interviews.
Interview text is only an intermediate artifact. His task is to record the results of the interview so that later it would be convenient to create other documents. Some tips on writing the interview.
We gave an example of an abstract of an interview earlier in one of the articles .
After drawing up the abstract, the analytical work on the processing of qualitative data begins. The result of this analysis will be documents describing the respondents and their daily lives: portraits of users, life situations, the environment of use, user expectations, user questions, etc. It is with these documents that your project team will work. On the creation of each of these documents, you can write a separate article. It is very desirable that at the stage of their development you also had the opportunity to consult with experts.
Let's summarize this part. An interview is only the first stage of user research. After it should be no less difficult work on the analysis of "raw" data. The quality of its implementation depends on what your team will work with. Your task is to bring all the collected information about users in a clear form. This is not so easy to do.
We reviewed the main problems and difficulties associated with the independent use of qualitative methodology on the example of an interview:
These tips will help you reduce the risk of getting poor-quality data.
What is the answer to the main question? Should I conduct qualitative research on my own? Repeat, if possible, it is better to contact the experts. An alternative option is a joint study, where you work with ready-made tools and have the opportunity to seek advice (it is especially important - after analyzing the first interviews). Such a work format presupposes a desire to independently deal with the methodology, work on errors and - most importantly - see the value of qualitative data for your project. If you are ready for this, you can try.
And a bonus is an example of a guide (comments are allowed).
In an ideal world, qualitative research is carried out by specialists armed with the necessary skills and competencies. Sociologists, social anthropologists, psychologists - all of them have been studying for years how to conduct such research, develop tools, collect and analyze qualitative data. Have the opportunity to hire a specialist? Do this, and do not need independent experiments. Why? The risk of getting poor-quality data is too high: irrelevant to the goals and objectives of the project, insufficiently detailed or completely meaningless (yes, this also happens).
And if there is no possibility? We understand. For example, budget constraints. Or it is not clear where to find the right specialist and how to evaluate his qualifications. The input data and motivation are secondary, the main thing is that you decided to do the research yourself. To be honest, the idea is quite risky. The specialist’s support will reduce the risk - he will help develop the toolkit, conduct preliminary briefing and advise on the course of field work. Yes, this is not a completely independent study, but we want to get a normal result.
Of course, this will not completely save you from problems and difficulties in working with the methodology. We will talk about these problems and difficulties using the example of working with the basic qualitative method - an interview. It is better to start with him - the method of observation is more complicated and often includes interviews. Interviews allow you to get qualitative data about users used to make decisions on a product at the stage of its development or modification.
')
This article will be helpful:
- those who decide on an independent study. Once again: if there is an opportunity to turn to specialists, do it. There is no possibility to entrust them with the job completely - ask for help in developing the toolkit and consultation
- those who organize their own UX-research department in the company;
- product managers who are forced to do everything on their own;
- interns who came to UX research from other social disciplines.
Basic principles of working with interviews: the development and use of the guide
What is an interview? It seems to be a simple conversation, what can be so complicated here? We find the user and talk with him about our product. Special training is not needed here. Unfortunately, things are not as simple as they seem. One of the tasks of the researcher, for example, is to create an atmosphere of easy communication. Here experience and communication skills are important. Ideally, the respondent forgets that he is giving an interview. And the researcher? The researcher, on the contrary, remembers that he does not just speak, but collects valuable information for the work of the project team. And this is the key difference between the interview and the conversation.
Despite the similarities with the conversation, an interview is a way to get the necessary data about users. This is the way to perceive this method: conversation is only an outer shell. The collected data will be used to solve specific product problems - the development of a new IT service, mobile application, professional interface, etc. Your project team has its own information needs: examine life situations, understand user behavior, test the hypotheses put forward, or get valuable insight to develop a new product. And here the difficulties begin.
Usually there are a lot of such questions. Forgot about them during the interview? Received substandard data for the team. And it is easy to forget - lack of experience, stress at the first interview, a silent or overly talkative respondent. What can be done? Solve the problem helps guide interview (from the English. Interview guide). This is a printed tip for the interviewer, containing a list of topics, key and additional questions for their disclosure. Simple, but effective solution. Without a guide for the interview is better not to take. Especially if you have no experience.
How is the interview guide created? First, the bad news - there is no ready-made guide for all occasions. A unique tool is created for each project, taking into account the purpose and objectives of the project, the information needs of the team, product features, use environment, etc. Although there are also common questions of a general nature, for example, the digital habits of users. Over time, you will form your block of standing questions, but you will have to forget about the universal guide forever.
Despite the uniqueness of the tool, a few general tips can still be given.
- Start with simple questions to warm up the respondent.
- To begin with - a block of questions about the respondent. This is your acquaintance with the interlocutor. Ask about age, education, leisure, family (if this is important for research).
- You can add to the first block general topics relevant to the study. For example, to better understand the level of computer literacy, the specifics of using the mobile Internet, the place of gadgets in a person’s life, etc. All this will be useful in the future for drawing up portraits of users and understanding of their actions and motives.
- In the first block there should be extremely simple questions about familiar everyday activities. Let the person get comfortable with the interview situation: do not download it immediately with your product.
- The general principle of any guide is from simple to complex. The most important topic for research is raised in the middle - by this point confidence will be established, and the interlocutor will be immersed in the subject.
- Topics may be different, they depend on the purpose of your study. But it is always important to get information about the actions of a person, his motives, his environment, the results of actions and the difficulties and problems that have arisen. This is a necessary minimum of information - keep this in mind when drafting questions.
- Sometimes, when developing a guide, you want to immediately receive a response from the respondent: what should be the future product or service? Do not shift the work of your team to a person - he does not possess the necessary professional competencies. Your task is to study his experience, his daily life and understand where your product or service is. During the interview, you are at the data collection stage; you will design it later.
- You can do the modeling of a future product or service with the respondent only at the end of the interview - this will allow your interlocutor to build on the personal experience described earlier.
- At the end of the interview, ask the respondent if he wants to add something to the above. Maybe he has questions for you. Sometimes at the same time important moments of research come up.
What gives us the use of guide? Guide sets the structure of the conversation, but does not set hard boundaries for the interviewer. How does it look in practice? The respondent raised an important topic for research that you did not take into account in the guide. You do not interrupt the respondent, discuss this topic with him, and then return to the structure of the guide. That is why such interviews are called semi-structured. Guide does not oblige you to literally reproduce the wording of the questions - look at the situation of the dialogue, the experience of the respondent, the style of communication and choose the options that are most understandable to the interlocutor. At the same time, it is better for beginners to adhere to the structure of the guide and check the list of topics and questions more often.
How to work with guide? The presence of the guide does not guarantee that the interview will take place perfectly. Here, research experience, communication skills, and, in fact, the ability to work with a guide are important. The first and second purchase with the help of the article will not work, but on the work with the guide you can give a few recommendations.
- A guide is a hint for the interviewer. You do not need to look at it constantly, read the questions - in this case, you destroy the atmosphere of conversation. Imagine that this is a cheat sheet on the exam: you have the opportunity to quickly look into it and make sure that everything is going according to plan.
- Before starting the study, look at the list of topics and questions in the guide - you should clearly understand the reasons why the team needs this information. This helps to keep the structure of the guide in your head: you do not memorize questions mechanically, but are well aware of their purpose.
- Try to remember the order of topics and questions. It is not necessary to know by heart all the questions, if you have a very detailed guide, it is enough to keep the main ones in mind, and you can ask additional ones as you go.
- Print the guide in a convenient format. Let the font be large enough, the division into topics - visual, important issues - highlighted visually. There are many design options, the main thing is to make you comfortable. Everything else tastes.
- If the respondent deviates from the topic, try to return it to the guide structure. Do not interrupt his speech, listen, and then return to a meaningful topic for you.
These tips will help you effectively use the guide during the interview, especially if this is a new experience for you.
Of course, creating a guide is not an easy task. Time to create it depends on the amount of information needs, requirements for data depth, the complexity of the topic. For example, when developing a new IT product, a more complex guide is needed - it will take longer to create. After the first interviews (pilotage) it may be necessary to finalize the guide, this is a normal practice. Qualitatively made, tested on pilotage guide - a good help for the interviewer. However, the development of such a guide should still be done by experienced researchers.
Thus, the novice guide allows you to solve several of the most pressing problems:
- do not forget about the goals and objectives of the project during the interview;
- follow the general logic of the conversation;
- monitor the progress of the interview.
Interviewer's fears: causes and ways to overcome
Let's move from the toolkit to whoever will work with it - the interviewer. A hot topic for newbies is the interviewer's fears. Even an experienced interviewer may be scared when working on a complex, sensitive topic. There are two types of fear factors:
- refusal to participate in an interview;
- failure to answer individual questions.
Are there any such situations? Of course there are! Although not as often as it seems to a newbie. Most people are ready to meet, if you clearly explain why you need this information. We will talk about how to do this.
Before starting the study, you need to come up with a story that is available - this is important! - the form explains the reason for your appeal to the interlocutor. Such a story is called a legend. Despite its name, the legend must be true - you should not lie to people, turning to them for help. Legends, like guides, are different for different projects. Here are some tips for preparing them.
- Briefly, without further details, tell the respondent what you are doing - for example, developing an application for a mobile bank, creating a website for young mothers, etc.
- Explain why it is his experience that matters to you. For example, "you often buy clothes in the online store," "you have been working in this field for a long time," "you have repeatedly encountered this problem," etc.
- Tell us how good the conversation with you will bring. More often it is not a material reward (although the respondent may receive a gift or bonuses on a loyalty card), but a deferred benefit (for example, a convenient service for bulk purchases that your interlocutor will use; an application for effectively solving his everyday tasks).
- Be sure to tell us that you guarantee confidentiality of information - personal data leakage is excluded. These are not just words - be prepared to protect the data. If, for example, the head of a company wants to know which employees do not know how to work with corporate software, you should not give him this information, since they do not matter for the design of a professional interface.
Literate understandable legend reduces the risk of failure to participate in the interview. Remember, people will talk to you if you clearly explain why you and they need it.
Now let's talk about the refusal to answer specific questions during an interview. This happens when it comes to sensitive or simply complex issues. A few tips to ensure that such situations occur less frequently or are overcome with minimal loss.
- Topics and questions in the guide should be arranged from simple to complex - when confidence is established and the respondent is immersed in the topic, it is easier for him to remember his actions and motives.
- If the respondent refuses to answer, tell him again why you need this information, and remind you about the guarantees of confidentiality - sometimes it is enough for the person to meet you.
- Ask why a person does not want to answer. Perhaps he does not want to talk about minor points for research, and the rest is ready to tell.
- Try to formulate the question differently, without requiring unnecessary details: for your purposes, for example, specific amounts of money, real names of people, names of companies, etc. are not important.
- If the above techniques do not help, ask the respondent to tell about other people. For example: “Tell me, how do your colleagues perform this task?” It is easier for a person to speak not about himself, but describing the actions of others, he often expresses his thoughts.
Only experience will help to completely overcome fears, but the tips given above will help reduce the risk of situations when the respondent refuses to participate in the study or does not want to answer specific questions.
The problem of interviewer self-confidence: I understand perfectly what you mean
Let us turn to the circumstances of the interview itself and discuss one of the most serious mistakes of a novice, which can eliminate all efforts to develop a guide. During the interview, it may seem to you that you are on the same wavelength with the respondent - you perfectly understand his situation, motives and actions. This is one of the most dangerous illusions for the researcher. It is easy for her to succumb, for example, when discussing ordinary everyday activities, which everyone should do the same. What could be special there? Or if you are a professional and well versed in the subject. Here your knowledge can play a cruel joke with you, creating the illusion of understanding another person.
Why is this a problem? Let's see what the result gives you an interview. Your task is to get the story (or stories) of the respondent, which describes:
- actions;
- motives;
- environment (physical space, social environment);
- problems and difficulties;
- result;
- human performance evaluation
A good guide is designed to receive such stories - with the help of questions from the guide, the interviewer pushes the respondent to a detailed story. What happens if you are convinced that you fully understand the motives and actions of the respondent? Will you try to reveal all the details of the story? Not. Even if you have a guide. You will be so sure of the correctness of your own estimates that some of the questions from the guide may seem unnecessary. The result of this confidence is poor-quality data that you bring to your team. And she will use this data to make specific decisions on the product.
Let's take the axiom: you do not know what, how and why the other person does. That is why you came to him and conduct research. With this approach, it will be easier for you to conduct interviews, and the quality of data will improve. Your main question during the interview is “why?”. Ask it as often as possible - it allows you to uncover a person's motivation, reproduce the logic of his actions, understand the attitude to the situation. Do not be afraid to seem silly when asking this question. Remember, your task is to get a detailed story. More “why?” And fewer questions that can only be answered with “yes” or “no”.
Waiting for quick results: interview is only the first stage of the research
So you did an interview. Is the study complete? Not. Depending on which method of fixing the information you have chosen, you have a notepad or voice recorder on your hands. Now you have to transform the results into text - you need to take time right away. Getting text from notes in a notebook is easier and faster, but during the interview you will have to be distracted by the notes and quickly decide what is important and what is not. If you choose a voice recorder, then you have an audio file that you need to decrypt. It is monotonous and long work.
How to start a newbie? We recommend using a voice recorder at first so that nothing prevents you from concentrating during a conversation. In addition, listening to your own recording and fixing the answers is a good bug fix. You will immediately see where you did not ask clarifying questions, did not reveal the story, or missed an interesting new topic. For this reason, it is better to do the texts on the first interviews right away - this will help avoid repeating mistakes in the following interviews.
Interview text is only an intermediate artifact. His task is to record the results of the interview so that later it would be convenient to create other documents. Some tips on writing the interview.
- Interview texts should be standardized. The easiest way is to repeat the structure of the guide.
- The text should contain the date, duration, comments (for example, important points in the course of the interview) and key characteristics of the respondent.
- The text should be illustrative quotes - so you save live speech informants, which can be used, for example, to revive the characters.
We gave an example of an abstract of an interview earlier in one of the articles .
After drawing up the abstract, the analytical work on the processing of qualitative data begins. The result of this analysis will be documents describing the respondents and their daily lives: portraits of users, life situations, the environment of use, user expectations, user questions, etc. It is with these documents that your project team will work. On the creation of each of these documents, you can write a separate article. It is very desirable that at the stage of their development you also had the opportunity to consult with experts.
Let's summarize this part. An interview is only the first stage of user research. After it should be no less difficult work on the analysis of "raw" data. The quality of its implementation depends on what your team will work with. Your task is to bring all the collected information about users in a clear form. This is not so easy to do.
Afterword: Is it worth it to do the research yourself?
We reviewed the main problems and difficulties associated with the independent use of qualitative methodology on the example of an interview:
- development of research tools - interview guide;
- work with guide;
- interviewer fears and risks such as refusing to participate in research or refusing to answer individual questions;
- the problem of self-confidence of the interviewer and the risk of obtaining poor-quality data;
- specific processing of "raw" qualitative data.
These tips will help you reduce the risk of getting poor-quality data.
What is the answer to the main question? Should I conduct qualitative research on my own? Repeat, if possible, it is better to contact the experts. An alternative option is a joint study, where you work with ready-made tools and have the opportunity to seek advice (it is especially important - after analyzing the first interviews). Such a work format presupposes a desire to independently deal with the methodology, work on errors and - most importantly - see the value of qualitative data for your project. If you are ready for this, you can try.
And a bonus is an example of a guide (comments are allowed).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/320812/
All Articles