INTERVIEWS
Primary Reference Sources
Blomberg, J., Giacomi, J., Mosher, A. & Swenton-Hall, P. (1993)
Ethnographic field methods and their relation to design. In: Schuler, D.
& Namioka, A. (eds.) Participatory Design: Principles & Practices.
New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Fowler, FJ (Jr), Mangione, TW (1990) Standardised Survey Interviewing.
Sage Publications, Newbury Park.
Summary description
Commonplace technique where domain experts are asked questions by an interviewer
in order to gain domain knowledge. Interviewing is not as simple as it
may appear and comes in 3 types: unstructured interviews, semi-structured
interviews and structured interviews. The type, detail and validity of
data gathered vary with the type of interview and the experience of the
interviewer.
Typical Application Areas
Interviewing is still the most widely used and abused method of finding
out what users want. The apparent simplicity of an unstructured interview
lies in the fact that interviewing appears to be a skill which most adults
feel they posses from their experience of social conversation. It is characterised
be an unconstrained attitude to the agenda and is a technique that is conducted
in practically any human endeavour.
Semi-structured interviewing is useful in situations where broad issues
may be understood, but the range of respondents’ reactions to these issues
is not known or suspected to be incomplete.
Structured interviewing should only be carried out in situations where
the respondents’ range of replies is already well known and there is a
need to gauge the strength of each shade of opinion.
Benefits
Useful for identifying possible areas for more detailed analysis. The data
gathered provides information on general rules and principles and is faster
than observational methods. Interviews are useful for investigating events
which occur infrequently and are popular, well known and widely accepted.
Interviews, whatever their limitations, have the extremely positive
feature that they give the interviewee the feeling that their input to
the process has been taken account of, Extremely useful for getting ‘buy
in’ from the interviewee, and promoting a good image for the representative
of the company doing the interview.
Limitations
There is room for considerable bias in what questions are asked and how
the answers are interpreted. The interviewer may need to acquire domain
knowledge in order to know what questions to ask. What people say often
differs from what they really do.
In addition it has been argued that questions with content involving
"prestige, social gain and personal circumstances" could bias the response.
In a knowledge elicitation context, where the "informant" has the assumed
title of "expert", these factors could play a critical role in the ultimate
success of the enterprise.
Cost of use
Requires considerable preparation on the part of the interviewer.
Suitability for requirements engineering in Telematics:
Many partners will have experience of this technique. It is widely accepted
and used in industry.
How to get it
Widely covered in the literature.
Detailed description of method
In an elicitation context, the semi-structured interview is generally most
fruitful. However, Fowler and Mangione give an excellent account of how
to conduct structured interviews should these be needed. There are typically
four phases in the interview:
-
The "nurturing" phase. This is the initial warm-up to the interview with
pleasantries exchanged, and introductions made.
-
The "energising" phase. Here the area of discourse, and any existing problems
are identified.
-
The "body" of the interview. This is the peak phase of activity, where
the interviewer is continually probing, ideally asking open-ended questions
about issues to understand the range of responses the users produce. It
is important at this stage for the interviewer to remain analytical and
neutral.
-
The "closing" phase. Summaries may be given as to what has taken place.
Subsequent actions are noted, and future planning is made.
Before the interviews, the interview team should decide on a list of issues
that will be brought up with each user, and identify strategies and ‘for
examples’ in case the users find it difficult to answer to some topics.
After the interviews, the design team should pool their notes and present
a summary of user reactions to each topic. If more than one interviewee
is present, the interviewers may be increased in number but should never
exceed the number of interviewees by more than one.