Design Models and Diagrams
5. PARTICIPATORY INTERVIEWS: to uncover attitudes and desires One of the most used method of researching user’s latent needs and desires are interviews. A participatory interview is a way to make people talking about their experiences, their attitudes, their difficulties with devices. An interaction designer uses this method to be inspired from people both for design better versions of products but also for designing new devices, based on new technology. Interviewers may ask users to describe a typical day, why they do things, what they do when some events occur, and so on. During the interview the designer takes notes and try to stimulate the interviewee imagination to discover new ideas and proposals regarding new design opportunities. It’s very important to try to discover the emotional attitudes of the interviewee because “products without an emotional component are lifeless and do not connect with people” 1. However interviews have also a problematic aspect that is that often what people say is different from what they do and think; for trying to avoid this problem designers ask people to tell stories about their experiences and interactions with objects (this approach is different and from just making questions). Another important thing is that designers should prefer how, what, why questions and avoid that which can be answered only with yes or no because the interviewee should be encouraged to analyze situations. Figure 5.1
Interviews or focus groups (that means assembling a group of experts in different fields to consider various professional points of view) may also include asking users to do simple sketches of a system, because drawings allow to explain choices afterwards.
During interviews is important to take notes about what users say and try to stimulate their imagination maybe with the help of sketches that visualize ideas.
After collecting data designers analyze them to identify patterns of responses.
Figure 5.2 Ask people to talk about they experience with products and services. For example: What do you think about it? When do you use it? Why do you like it? How do you do this?
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1. Dan Saffer, 2007, Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, p.8.
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