Watching friends playing Bamboozled made me write a better script for my user interviews
Let me just start saying if you don't know what I'm talking about here's a clip of Joey as the host and Ross and Chandler playing the game.
Now that you know what i'm talking about let's deep dive in my learnings:
#1 — Let the user talk!
When Ross is introducing himself he's talking about the aspects that make him unique, you might think: "Oh, I don't wanna know that, it helps me with… nothing!". Au contraire Sherlock, when you know environmental factors you can map characteristics that might be very useful for an ethnographic study since the user already provided you information, and information for us is gold!
#2 — Is there a right answer for everything?
The common response will be yes, but is there really? The users might choose different paths for the same destination, picture this: "Years ago when I was backpacking through western Europe I was just outside Barcelona hiking in the foothills of Mount Tibidabo, I was at the end of this path and I came to a clearing, there was a very secluded lake and there were tall trees all around, it was dead silent and across the lake I saw a beautiful woman bathing herself but she was crying…" This is a storytelling with a lot of details, right? But your user might not provide you with a lot of insights like this, if you ask yourself: how did he got to western Europe coming from New York? Might have gotten over there by plane, a ship, cruise, swimming or they could have taken all of these or none of those. The problem is if we assume instead of asking a good formulated question you might get answers that aren't clear enough.
#3 — If you have to explain the question you didn't provide a good one.
Around one minute and half in the video, Joey's explaining the wicked wango card, if the user cannot understand what you mean precisely, misconceptions will come in place, and that's a dangerous spot to be on. Chandler's response is clear: "higher or lower than what?", if you do not have set a bar to compare with, the user might force himself to answer something, be quiet or provide you with information on their understanding of what this question should be.
Be clear, create a scenario and ask yourself the questions to test it. It's very helpful.
#4 — Try not the put some challenges in the words you are choosing
I'll explain it better, if the user has to use the google card to understand you, oh well, we are in trouble! The talk has to be easy for the user to understand, if you use too many words that are not on their knowledge, you'll might spend a little more time explaining instead of listening. This also works for technical terms, I always like to say that you have to speak the same language. It helps to learn how your user live, what they value, the daily activities on the job, but also aspects that affects their routine, they can be useful as a future insight for a hypothesis, opportunity or even a new research. I would like to point it out that: they have to be open to it!
#5 — My special tip for you: Evaluate each interview with metrics to keep improving
I'll tell you how I do, but you can make it work for your scenario, ok?
After all interviews I put some simple metrics, like 1 to 3.
1- Didn't got all the insights that I needed
2- Got some insights, but missed some points
3- The interview was very insightful
And I ask to the user's how they felt when answering the questions if they liked or disliked or had some difficulty in doing so. This is good for you to keep track (if you're working solo this helped me a lot!) on the way you are making the script of the interview, in which order a question should appear and if you are being understood. Compare the interviews evolution with the same user, and you could also set a goal metric for you to keep improving.
Hope I've could help you, leave a comment and share with me your thoughts!
