The interview guide for Engineering

Persona by Alla, Illya, Nati

INTRO
<Introduce yourself and present the interview goal. Emphasize that there are no right/wrong answers>

Hi! We are really appreciate your agreement to participate in our investigation

My name is .......

The purpose of our interview is to investigate your experience and help SDC Verifier
to improve our services.

Our interview will last for about 1 hour and the conversation will be only around your
personal experience. There are no wrong or right answers here.

I need to confirm that you agree to record this call for further analysis. The recording
will remain confidential and won’t be shared with anyone else.

Do you have any questions at this point?

MAIN PART
<Remember that we need to be an active listener and ask for details.>

Part 1 (Ice-breaking, introduction)

<We would like to learn more about the customer: his/her role, company, responsibilities, years of
experience, etc>

1. Let’s start. Tell us a little bit about yourself. You are <before the interview we need to
know name and job title, company name, years of experience in Engineering role>, for how
long have you been working in your company?
2. Can you tell more about your key responsibilities?
3. Tell us about your typical activities throughout the day?
4. Additional question to get more details:
a. How busy are you?
b. How tough is your schedule?
c. Do you like your job? What do you like the most? the least?
d. Why did you choose this occupation?
e. What helps you to stay productive?
Part 2 (the routine and main processes)
<We would like to know more details about the processes and emotions which are related to them.
So, we are interested in day to day processes, key stages in a typical project, problems encountered,
goals, etc.>

1. What processes are you performing on a regular basis, what specific

tasks/activity are you performing? What problems are you trying to solve?
2. What standards do you use?
3. How do you do the verification procedure against standards? and how often?
4. Additional question to get more details:
a. How often do you fail the internal/external verification procedure
against a specific standard?
b. What problem did you face to get the certificate for your engineering
project? How much time does it typically take to obtain certification?
c. Do you feel a necessity to automate some parts of work, some
processes to save time and resources?
d. When was the last time you looked for information about standards?
How did you do that? What key words did you use? How much time
did you spend on this? How many useful resources do you typically
find?
e. How much time do you usually spend on calculating according to
standards? How do you automate this process? Do you feel you need
to spend less time on such activities?

Part 3 (tools, actions and methods)

<We would like to know more details about the engineering experience, tools , actions, methods,
preferences and etc.>

1. What experience do you have with automation tools for validating structures
against certain standards and why do you need them (for example, only
verification according to standards, automation of calculations, savings on the
construction budget, limited calculation time)
2. What tools do you use and for how long have you been using them?
a. Which are basic and most needed?
b. What tools/functionality you are missing? What task would you
like to automate?
3. What problems do the tools solve and how?
4. Which tools are trusted and why?
5. Where do you find new software, resources, approaches?
6. What is your general experience of learning new software? How often does this
happen and what are the pains and gains?
7. Is the program visual part important to you, or is the design not the main thing?
8. How do you improve your skills? What do you like about the learning process?
What training programs do you attend and how do you rate their benefits for
you?
9. Have there been cases when you asked an expert for help or advice?
10. Please share your experience within the training and onboarding process to
master a new software product.
11. Do you feel the need for tutorials on how to use new software?
12. How does the follow-up support process work and how useful/necessary is it?
13. Please share an example of a program with which you mastered on your own
because it was comprehensive and easy?
14. Additional question to get more details:
a. (triggers) When and how a need to use a software (like SDC and
other) occurs?
b. What do you do if not all standards are covered in the existing
software?
c. Is it critical for you to have a certified software? If yes, what
certification should be and what certification should cover?
d. Do you use the reports’ functionality? What critical things are
important when creating a report? What is missing?
e. How convenient is it to work with several different programs in order to
get a single final result?
f. Do you attend online or offline events related to engineering, new
programs and technologies, trends, etc.?
g. Do you feel uncomfortable with the current design of the software you
use?
h. Does software make the engineer’s life easier? How? What type of
software/program? (smth you won’t be able to survive without)
i. How often do you require help from consultants-coaches in solving
issues related to software performance? What is this software and
why does this happen?
j. What valuable information have you learned when visiting training on
how to use software usage such as SDC, before you started working
with it effectively?
Part 4 (SDC software experience)
<We would like to know more about SDC experience. If user doesn’t have an SDC experience we will
skip that stage in one exception - ask question #7 at this list and go to the Part 5 (non SDC
customers)>

1. What is your experience with SDC? How did you learn about SDC?
2. Please share your software training and onboarding experience with SDC?
3. How does the follow-up support process work and how useful/necessary is it?
4. Do you feel the responsibility and experience difficulties when checking the
design of the project? How do you make sure that the project is done correctly?
5. What are the major issues that SDC software (or other similar tools on the
market) help you solve? What issue you’re facing cannot be solved by SDC
software (and/or other similar tools)?
6. What would like to hear more from SDC? What information and content would be
of interest to you?
7. Have you heard about SDC Verifier standalone solution?
a. <yes> Have you started using it already?
i. <no> What is missing in this solution?
b. <no> We can offer you a trial version for a month for you to test
the solution. It’ll help complete the project, calculations,
optimization, verification against standards and generate reports
- all actions can be done in one tool. Would you like to give it a
try?
8. <if not our user> What do you know about SDC?
9. Additional question to get more details:
a. How did you learn about SDC?
b. How much time did you need to master SDC software?
c. What specific tasks do you accomplish within SDC software and why?
d. While working with SDc software what functionality you have and what
don’t you have you wish you had?
e. Is SDC software interface user friendly/comfortable to work with?
f. What do you know about SDC competitors?
g. What other software do you have to use besides SDC and for which
activities?
h. At what stage of a project using software such as SDC is most
effective/valuable? and at what stage it becomes inevitable?
i. How often do you require help from consultants-coaches in solving
issues related to software performance?
 j. Would it be true to say that software such as SDC saves time and
money?

Part 5 (civil engineer, non SDC customers)

<We would like to know more details about the civil engineering processes, needs, tools, etc.>

1. Please share with us your typical project routine. What stages does it go
through, what are the needs of the customers and what tasks are you trying to
accomplish? What software tools do you use? How much time does it take on
average to complete every task?
2. What is the conciliation procedure for engineering works? How is the calculation
and validation according to the standards happen? Which bodies certify the final
design and grant construction permits if everything is calculated correctly?
3. How typically are your project deliverables (e.g. design, calculations, reports)
presented to the customer?
4. Have you come across a software solution that optimizes materials, provides
savings by performing calculations based on standards? Are you interested in
testing such a tool?
5. Have you come across software that performs calculations simulating real
natural conditions? Are you interested in testing such a tool?
6. Additional question to get more details:
a. What are your main projects? Construction of which objects?
b. How many engineers are typically involved in a project?
c. Do you create designs and calculations for customers or for your own
needs/business/company?

Part 6 (Decision making process)

<We would like to know more about decision making processes: (budget allocation, software
selection, decision makers and decision making process itself)>

1. Please describe the process of decision making in regards to

purchase/replacement of software:
a. What is the software selection process?
b. How is the decision made in terms of selecting a specific tool?
c. How does the negotiation process look like with a software
vendor?
 d. What is the alignment/consensus process within your company?
e. How is the final decision made?
f. What is it important to know before making a decision?
2. Please describe how the process of implementation, training (onboarding) and
support is provided by a new software vendor.
3. What is the process of license prolongation?
4. Are you interested in increasing the competitiveness of your team or company?
How do you increase competitiveness? Among all the mentioned items what is
bigger of a priority for you?
5. Do you have a goal to save cost on materials? What (incentive) will you get if
you find a way to save?
6. Additional question to get more details:
a. Please share the process of acceptance, implementation and handing
over a work project.
b. What software information do you lack and at what stage?