Product Research Rules by C. Todd Lombardo

Author:C. Todd Lombardo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Published: 2019-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

The Day Of: Preparing for an Interview

As we said in Chapter 1, you can’t just walk into a cafeteria, ask random questions, and call it research. In Chapter 4 you learned about planning and preparing for interviews, including choosing a method, finding participants, and creating a field guide. Preparing on the day of the interview will also help to make your interviews go smoothly.

Because interviews create a personal connection, it’s easy to let the interview session overwhelm you. When this happens, the quality of your research goes down. You struggle to listen attentively, have difficulty focusing on nuances, and find it all too easy to let your mind wander. When an interviewer loses focus, much of the preparation goes to waste. It’s no use carefully picking a research question, finding the right people to work with, and creating a comprehensive field guide only to waste it all because you aren’t prepared for the session.

So how should you prepare on the day of the interview? As researchers know, you might not get another chance to get the information you need about your participant. So it’s important to follow a structure that ensures nothing is missed. There are three things you can do to ensure that you are ready to conduct interviews that give maximum insights:

Remind yourself of the context of the interview.

Review the field guide in detail to refresh your mind about the research question and how you decided on it. Have a look at the list of participants you are going to work with.

Take care of yourself.

Fatigue, hunger, and thirst can all sabotage an interview that otherwise would have gone well. Make sure you have had enough sleep, have eaten, and are hydrated before your interview starts. Go to the bathroom before you leave to meet the participant.

Know whether coffee, tea, or tobacco alter your state of mind, and control your consumption accordingly. Aras always prefers a light cup of tea before an interview; his dad falls asleep if he drinks tea. You know your body best, so nourish yourself in a way that gets you ready to give your full attention to your participants. Doing something nourishing for yourself before an interview is also a deliberate break. It signals you to detach yourself from whatever is going on that day and begin to focus on the interview.

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