Contextual Interviewing using the Master & Apprentice Model
Involving users is a critical part of any experience design process. One key method to collect great qualitative insights is contextual inquiry or contextual interviews.
While quite a lot has been written about contextual interviews, one critical but often overlooked aspect is the master and apprentice model, which helps define how to conduct such interviews.
Contextual interviews differs from a traditional user interview in a few key ways.
First:
Interview the users in their ‘natural environment’ to preserve context and to observe usage.
Second:
Create a relationship between the user and the designer that follows the master and apprentice model:
“Who is the master? The user is.
Who is the apprentice? The designer is.”
The user is the master of her craft. The craft of using your product or service to get a job done. You, the designer, are the apprentice trying to understand the user’s craft:
1. What exactly is it that the user has to get done?
2. How does she have to get it done?
3. And why does she have to get it done in a certain way?
It is your job as the apprentice designer to learn as much as you can about the user’s world — the master of his craft. Or as Beyer & Holtzblatt would put it in their book on Contextual Design:
“Seeing the work reveals what matters.”
Now that we have established how to talk to users, let’s move on to some guiding principles that provide more nuance to the Master and Apprentice model.
Context + Partnership + Interpretation + Focus
Context is obvious. Whenever possible, go to wherever the user is when they are using your product or service — it could be their home, their workplace, on the road or anywhere else for that matter. Don’t make any excuses for not doing that. It may feel hard, or awkward, or intrusive the first time, maybe the second, but after a very short while, you will embrace your inner anthropologist and unlock a new quality of conversations with your users. Sometimes, of course, remote user interviews will be the only option, due to time or budget constraints. In those cases, try and contextualise the remote conversation as much as possible. Get them to share their screen and walk you through what they are doing. Or let them show you relevant artefacts or contextual cues that come up in the conversation.
Partnership refers to turning your user interview into a real conversation. Do not try to get through your list of questions as quickly as possible. I do not even try to get through all of my questions in the first place. Engage the user in a conversation and let it flow where the user takes you. She is the master, remember. Listen and learn, while she is revealing previously unarticulated aspects of her work.
Interpretation is critical to help develop a shared understanding of what matters. Being an active listener means to not only hear the words, but to read between the lines and truly understand the message being communicated. For this to work, paying attention and removing distractions is critical. In practice, this means you cannot take notes while talking to your users. Get a second person to come along and take notes, or record the session and transcribe it afterwards. No notes, I mean it.
Focus the conversation. This does not mean to interrupt the user or to constantly question the value of every seemingly tangential comment. In fact, those superficially irrelevant comments are often the gold-dust of every contextual interview. They are the magic revealing new insight and context to the already known. However, there comes a point in every conversation, where the user moves too far off topic and has to be brought back. Developing a good sense for when is a good time to re-focus a conversation is probably the most difficult aspect of contextual interviews and needs practice to master. When in doubt, let the conversation continue a bit longer. Nothing is worse than the insight lingering under the surface that never emerged.
Disclaimer:
The more we read, the more we learn, the firmer we stand on the shoulders of the giants before us. This particular article was inspired by and pays homage to the following references:
- Ben Schneiderman (2009). Designing the user interface.
- Karen Holtzblatt & Hugh Beyer (2016). Contextual Design: Design for life.
- Druin, A. (2002). The Role of Children in the Design of New Technology. Behaviour and Information Technology.
