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Conducting User Interviews

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Introduction to Interviewing

2:59 with Hope Armstrong

Interviews with real people make a powerful impact on product stakeholders. The real stories of users or potential users can change the stakeholders' beliefs, assumptions, and perceptions about what people need, and what motivates them. Interviewing creates understanding, empathy, and human relatedness.

Definitions:

  • User interview - A method for gathering information, through direct dialogue.
  • Rationalization - A psychological phenomenon in which we humans, change the reality we tell others about.

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    [MUSIC] 0:00
    Interviewing users or potential users, is one of the most useful techniques for 0:04
    gaining insights about people and their needs. 0:10
    An interview is a method for gathering information through direct dialogue. 0:13
    Through this dialogue, product teams can capture feelings, desires, 0:19
    struggles, the likes and opinions of their audience and potential audience. 0:23
    The primary benefit of interviewing users is direct contact. 0:29
    Interviewers interact with interviewees in person without using any tool, 0:33
    service or product to bypass direct communication. 0:39
    Communicating directly with interviewees, 0:42
    significantly reduces the chance of misinterpreting collected data. 0:45
    However, if you simply can't find participants in your area that meet 0:50
    the criteria for your research, the second best thing to do is video interviews. 0:54
    Video calls open up a whole world of people to interview. 1:00
    While it lacks some body language cues, you'll still be able to 1:04
    build up a rapport, as well as get a sense of their demeanor. 1:08
    Interviewing people, rather than making assumptions about them, is powerful. 1:11
    It creates an unimaginable impact on product stakeholders. 1:17
    And changes their beliefs, assumptions and 1:21
    perceptions about what people need and what motivates them. 1:24
    Interviewing creates understanding, empathy and human relatedness. 1:29
    It helps individuals, 1:34
    teams and organizations add a human aspect to what they do. 1:36
    It also builds credibility, 1:40
    as it supports quantitative data gathered in other ways, such as analytics. 1:42
    It helps explain it, it helps you understand its logic and 1:48
    provides a solid basis for coming to the right conclusions. 1:52
    With that said, interviewing people carries one great caveat, 1:56
    that caveat is called rationalization. 2:01
    Rationalization is a psychological phenomenon in which we humans, 2:04
    change the reality we tell others about. 2:09
    We don't this intentionally, we humans want to be perceived as good, 2:12
    friendly and helpful, we wanna be loved. 2:18
    Therefore, when an interviewer asks us about something that happened, 2:21
    we will change the story a little bit. 2:25
    Sometimes, a lot more than a little bit. 2:27
    We want the interviewer to feel good about the data we provide them with, so 2:30
    we rationalize. 2:34
    This is human nature, the bad news is that as an interviewer, 2:36
    you can never tell when rationalization is happening. 2:40
    Later on, I'll teach you one technique that can help you prevent rationalization. 2:44
    But remember, 2:48
    you'll never be able to identify it when it happens right in front of your eyes. 2:49
    Now let's dive into the most important part of this research method, 2:54
    the questions. 2:58

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