Asking Big Questions: Week 4 at MxM
With a final topic finally decided, week four was all about the interviews. I’ve been the interviewee quite a few times before, but rarely had I been the one to hold the reigns. I was a bit nervous, but all the interviews went well and provided valuable insights about technology for event planning.
1. Stick with a loose outline.
I found that in my first interview I stuck closely to the questions we outlined. The conversation felt rigid and the answers were too straightforward. For the second interview, I interviewed from my memory of the outline and the conversation flowed naturally. I was able to focus on the answers, rather than my next question, which allowed me to ask follow-up questions.
2. Interactive tools are engaging during and informative afterwords.
We created a three part outline to the event planning process. The person was encouraged to fill out and categorize stickies based on planning past event(s). The interactivity seemed really engaging for interviewees. Additionally, it helped them organize the process in their head so they could better explain it to us. For us, the cleanly organized material made finding common threads between interviewees quick and easy.
3. Run-throughs help you find the bumps.
Before you interview someone, I highly recommend you conduct a practice one. The practice interviews we did with Chris Bell and Leslie Bradshaw helped us recognize that search and decide didn’t need to be separate categories. They also helped us reframe bad questions (age?) into good questions (years of experience?) which saved us from possibly starting the interview off on a bad foot.
4. Pay attention to the seemingly irrelevant details.
At first glance, you may be wondering why I chose to include a picture of me sitting in a phone booth. What you probably wouldn’t guess is this phone booth was our interviewees office decor. Decor can tell you a lot about someone. Like her office, Casey Taylor was on top of trends. She used many of the most modern event planning tools out there.
Like this seemingly irrelevant picture of me in a phone booth, there will be many passing comments or actions in an interview that are unexpectedly insightful. Either pay attention or capture them on camera because you never know what might inspire your lightbulb moment.
5. Don’t be scared to really delve in
Speaking of Casey, we gained an important insight from interviewing her. Despite telling us in detail about how she used google sheets, I felt unsatisfied. Instead of just telling us, I asked her to show us. That didn’t help. I still didn’t understand why sheets was beating out products targeted specifically for event planners. I decided to push further.
“Why not a to do list app or something with a better interface?”
From that, we discovered an obvious, but strangely unresolved problem. All the alternatives force her to re-enter her to do list for each event, even though it’s the same list every time. Without really delving into the whys, this small, but clearly important detail would go unnoticed.
Interviewing is definitely a skill I still need practice with, but picking up and implementing tips along the way really help the process of mastering that skill. Keeping track of what worked for me doesn’t hurt either.
