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Conducting An Interview With Empathy

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15 views3 pages

Conducting An Interview With Empathy

Uploaded by

Maganalig
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Conducting an Interview with

Empathy
Preparing for an Interview
To make the most out of your interviews, you should sufficiently prepare your team before each
one. Having a plan for your interview will make it much more smoother and make sure you cover all
the important areas in one sitting.

Use these steps to help you prepare and plan for an interview:

1 Brainstorm with your team the questions you can ask. To maximise the spread of potential
questions, remember to build on one another’s ideas.

2 After the brainstorming session, group the potential questions into areas or themes. After
you have identified all the themes your questions belong to, try to figure out the best order of
themes that would ensure a smooth flow of conversation. Are there themes that are slightly
more probing? Then put them towards the middle of the interview. Additionally, if one theme
builds on another, it would be good for them to follow one after another.

3 The last step to preparing your interview is to polish the questions. Remove repeated
questions, and consolidate or separate questions where necessary. Make sure your
questions allow you to tap into the emotions of your interviewee.

INTERACTION-DESIGN.ORG

Creative Commons BY-SA license: You are free to edit and redistribute this template, even for commercial use, as long as you give credit to the Interaction Design Foundation. Also, if you remix,
transform, or build upon this template, you must distribute it under the same CC BY-SA license.
Conducting an Interview
Here are some tips you can use when conducting your interviews with users:

• Ask why, even if you think you know the answer. Don’t assume to know what users are thinking
or feeling — sometimes, their answer might surprise you.

• Ask for anecdotes. When asking users about their experiences, try to tease out stories of what
they did in the recent past, rather than asking about generic experiences. For example, ask them
about the last time they used a recipe app, instead of asking about their experience with recipe
apps in general.

• Observe for body language — they often tell us more than what was spoken!

• Don’t lead the question. When asking a question, frame it to be as neutral as possible. Rather
than asking “Do you think it’s very troublesome to find recipes?”, try “What do you think of the
process of finding recipes?” instead.

• Have an interview partner. It’s impossible to take notes while listening to what your interviewee
is saying at the same time. If you can’t find a partner, use an audio recording app while you
interview so you can be focused on following up and asking questions.

INTERACTION-DESIGN.ORG

Creative Commons BY-SA license: You are free to edit and redistribute this template, even for commercial use, as long as you give credit to the Interaction Design Foundation. Also, if you remix,
transform, or build upon this template, you must distribute it under the same CC BY-SA license.
About the Interaction Design
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INTERACTION-DESIGN.ORG

Creative Commons BY-SA license: You are free to edit and redistribute this template, even for commercial use, as long as you give credit to the Interaction Design Foundation. Also, if you remix,
transform, or build upon this template, you must distribute it under the same CC BY-SA license.

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