 In this video, you're going to learn how to get more valuable insights out of user interviews and make the process more enjoyable and fun for everybody involved. Let the show begin! Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the Service Design Show. This show is all about helping you do more work that makes you proud by designing and delivering services that are good for people and business. And a key part in actually designing and delivering those services is interviewing people, understanding users through interviews. And I see a big problem with interviews is that they are still, in a lot of cases, used as a survey method, as a survey tool. And I think that's a really bad way to think about interviews. Because interviews are not the way to validate data. That's not how we should be using them. That's not the stage of the design process we should be using interviews in. Interviews, the way we use them and the way I think you'll get the most value out of them, is early on in the design process where you're exploring and trying to uncover and revel and discover a certain topic. That's where user interviews really shine and where you get really the most value out of them. And like I said, interviews are probably one of the first things you should be doing in your design process. And if you mess that up, it will have great consequences for the rest of your project. You'll stay on the surface, you won't uncover any interesting insights. You're basically going to waste your time doing them. On the flip side, if you manage to do interviews, well, they can be a great energy boost for everyone involved and you can learn so much that will inspire you for the rest of the project. The way I like to think about interviews and what you can get out of them is like imagine that every insight you find is like a Lego brick. And when you do interviews, not really in a good way, you'll end up with Lego bricks, just the yellow and blue Lego bricks, the square ones, and that won't allow you to create many interesting solutions for the process. On the other side, if you do interviews, well, you'll end up with a lot of exotic Lego bricks, all different kinds of colors, all different kinds of shapes. You'll have a much broader spectrum of insights that you can later on use to come up with good ideas and solutions. So interviews can be really powerful, but they can also cripple you. So I want to talk about some tips that will allow you to actually get the most value out of interviews in your next project. So the first thing you should always try to do when conducting user interviews is to prepare your participants, basically give them some kind of homework. They will do two things. It will allow you to collect data even before the interview starts, and it will also get your participants in the right mindset. So the conversation that you'll have actually during the interview will be much smoother and you'll be able to go much more in depth. So what kind of homework can you give? Well, there are many different things. One thing we like to do is to let people make photos that are relevant for the topic that we'll be talking about. So I don't know if we're going to talk about your ideal workplace, make a photo of what makes you happy in your work or make a few photos. I don't know, something like that. And you might be thinking, well, will people actually do that to the participants willing to spend time doing homework that are already investing time in doing the interview? Our experience is that they actually will, especially if you sort of have a good explanation and make sure that the assignment is really clear, that the homework is really clear. It shouldn't be complex. It shouldn't be too complicated. That's a simple assignment and explain why they should be doing that and how it will contribute to the interview later on. And then you'll be surprised how many people actually find it fun and enjoyable to do that stuff because they were able to talk about it later on in the interview. So tip number one, prepare people, give them homework, make it fun and make it in a way that is also giving you some data. That was tip number one. So here is tip number two. And tip number two is to design conversation tools. Now it has been said that we as service designers are tool, toolkit makers and I think in this case it is really good that we are because the way we try to do our interviews and I think what we've seen that gets the most value out of the interviews is when you have something to facilitate their conversation. What you want to do is to have a tool that is not too strict, that provides enough room to talk about the things that are relevant to the participant, but a tool that also gives enough structure to sort of guide the conversation. You might be thinking what kind of tools could we use? Well, if you don't have anything, a mind map. Just a mind map is already a good start because you'll be drawing the conversation out in front of you and people will be sort of making connections. But also a conversation tool might be a timeline. Just a timeline if that's relevant in your interview and your project. Let people draw on the timeline, point things out and yeah, that really helps. But the thing is don't make it too strict, leave enough room to let the conversation go in the way it's going to go, but provide some kind of structure to actually be able to ask more meaningful questions and make sure that things aren't just communicated verbally, but that they are also communicated in a visual way in front of you. You can also do this digitally. We do most of our interviews face to face. That's our preferred style when we can. But we've also designed conversation tools that we use in a virtual environment through tools like Real Time Board. I can talk about more about that in a different episode, but so tip number two is basically have some kind of conversation tool. Design conversation tools that are specific for your project and for the conversation you're going to have to guide the conversation and to get more in depth in the topic you want to talk about. That was tip number two. The third tip is to share your own stories. Now that might seem a little bit odd when you think, well, won't my stories influence or bias the answers of your participants? They might, depending on what you tell. But what I mean is I think you'll get the most value out of an interview when you're behaving like a human being rather than a human survey machine. This is not a survey. Remember, it's more of a conversation from my perspective rather than an interview. So for me, it's really important to connect with the other person across the table or persons. And for that, it's also important that I share stuff, that the other people see that I can relate to them and that I'm not just here to extract value, but I'm also here to as a human being. And when you share your own stories, people see, for one, that you're listening to them and that you're really interested to hear what they have to say. So my tip, even though, and you have to be mindful about what you share and what not to share to prevent as much bias as you will, but be personal, be authentic, don't be afraid to share some of your things. So when somebody tells you about a story and you can relate to that, just relate to that in that moment. And you can always ask questions to validate if something is based on a bias of what you just said, or if it's really something that somebody really means. Remember, we're not human serving machines. We're there to connect with people and to get insights. This is not an exact science. We're not looking for the exact truth. We're here to find insights and find clues. And I think the best way you'll get there is if you make real authentic connections with people. So don't be afraid to do that in your next interview. And here's one more bonus tip that works really well in interviews. And that is to let people point out things in the real world. So collect, I would say collect evidence of things that people are talking about. Now, what I mean in the first step, I was referring to letting people make photos with their phone stuff. That is a really good way to actually collect evidence because people will need to point things out that they want to express. But there are also the classic assignments like grab something out of your wallet or pick up something that is on your desk or take something out of your bag. Or even if you're in doing the homework assignment, let people make a print of something and then write a list. At least have something physical, have something to point at, because that makes a story much more credible. And it's much easier to talk about things that you can point out, rather than just having a conversation, verbal conversation, where it might be like conversation, like I wish I could or I would. Or it might become wishful thinking. Well, when you can point things out, it's much more likely that things actually happened or that there's evidence of it. So try to include in your interview set up a way that you can actually collect physical evidence that really helps. And if you want to know more about interviewing users, there's a super awesome book that I can recommend to everybody. It's by Steve Portagall, who was a guest on the show. I don't remember the exact number, but it will pop up over here. And the book is called Interviewing Users. So check it out. I will also include it down below in the show notes. So these three tips should really help you to get more valuable insights out of interviews and make your your time worthwhile and also the time of your participants. But I'm really interested. What are some common, classic mistakes that you see people making when doing user interviews? Leave a comment down below and I'll try to make a video on that. And it will be nice if we can co-create that one. If you're interested to learn how to explain service design to the people around you without confusing them, check out the free course that I've got for you over here. And I've got a playlist with some other interesting videos that will help to level up your service design skills. The playlist is over here. Thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.