In-depth Interviews

Determine your objectives. Identify what you want to find out from conducting the Interview and write them down. Be specific - what questions are you trying to answer?

Decide who you’re interviewing. Look at pre-existing personas or target markets you want to consider, and any other other parties you might want to interview such as stakeholders and customer care representatives. Make a note of any interviewee criteria to help find the right people.

Determine how many interviewees you want. There should be at least 4 people per user group. Generally, it’s better to talk to a smaller number of people more often. For example, instead of doing 20 in-depth interviews, you might get more valuable data from doing 8 discovery research interviews (using only topics of interest to discover the user needs), then 8 co-design sessions (to help design the solution), and 8 concept testing sessions with users.

Recruit people to interview. You can informally recruit if your topic is broad enough that anyone can relate. If you have a niche topic that needs specific types of people, you could give your interviewee criteria (step 2) to a recruitment agency to help find them.

Choose the interview location. Ideally, it should be in context of the topic because it encourages the interviewees to give richer responses (e.g. librarians in a library).

Decide how you’ll record the session.

• Use a recording device. 
• Ask someone to act as a note-taker. 
• If there’s only you (the interviewer) available, you can write notes with pen and paper. (Not recommended: you’ll miss nuances and opportunities to dig deeper.)

Decide on incentives. For most one-on-ones with agency-recruited interviewees there will be a cash incentive of around $100 per hour (it's often included in the recruitment fees and handled by the agency). For a lean approach, ask internally within the DAN network or intercept people on the street for a quick chat.

Write a discussion guide to keep you on track during the interview.

• Questions - start with broad questions about a person’s life, values, habits before asking more specific questions relating to your challenge. It sometimes helps to set a scenario before you ask the questions (e.g. “think about the last time you went to a library…”)
• Estimated timing - to keep you on track
• Wrap up and next steps

Prepare props and prototypes to help stimulate responses during an interview (if needed). The type of prop depends on which state the project is in. In the “Explore” state, you could use props such as cards to help direct the thinking. In the “Make” state, you could have cardboard prototypes or digital wireframes.

Interviewee agreement. The person being interviewed must sign a consent form to grant you permission to conduct the observation and to record activities. Let them know that they are free to stop at any time if the interview becomes uncomfortable, and ask if you can record the session.

Start the interview by introducing yourself. Describe the purpose and topic of the conversation, without going into details that could lead or influence your interviewee, and explain how the information will be used. For the best results, start by putting them at ease – let them know it’s not a test, that there are no right or wrong answers and to feel free to think out loud.

Ask warm up questions (5-15min) to help the interviewee feel comfortable with you and get used to answering questions. You can start by asking about their hobbies, interests, and then move onto asking easy questions that are related to the interview topic, so that the participant is primed when you get to the deeper questions. Show interest (nod, smile) to help build a connection, but stay neutral to avoid influencing their responses.

For the body of the interview (20-40min), move towards more “why” questions for a deep dive into their thoughts on your topic. Give them room to explore, encourage them and show interest, but be careful not to lead them to the answers you are looking for. If a question has been covered earlier in the interview, feel free to skip it.

Gently wrap-up the interview (5-10min) when you have all the information you need. Give your interviewee a chance to share anything else or comment on the interview. You could ask if anything resonated with them or if they’ve thought of something that they’d like to add. This is often when unexpected revelations come, so remember to write them down afterwards.

End the interview by thanking them for their time and letting them know if there are any administrative tasks such as incentives or next steps.

Analyse the results and identify insights. You could use visualisation tools such as affinity mapping, or empathy mapping to help you.