How to Structure interviews to gain Empathy — Design Thinking Part 2
Now that we have seen the Empathy Mapping technique in our Part 1 in this series, I thought I will delve deeper into the interview part.
Many of you wanted to know how to interview and gain empathy. I am going to list some of the techniques that will help with that. I am not inventing anything new, but merely giving examples around the specific techniques highlighted in Stanfords dschool approach which have helped me over the years.
Like always it helps to have a structure around how we approach interviews so that we get the best out of the limited time we get with our stakeholders. And the time we get with the users is precious so our objectives, set of questions and sequence should be prepared well before the meet.
I always prefer to have a conversational style during the interviews. It helps for our users to feel comfortable sharing their experiences. So do make sure to ensure they are in a very comfortable setup — be it over video conference or in person, try to ensure there is minimal distractions.
The key to effective interview is not in understanding the stated needs but also the ‘unstated needs’. What is it that the user needs but does not know it yet.
Question everything — So you have got your user and asked your first question and they have answered it. Before you move on to your next question — ask follow up questions to delve deeper into the answers. The simplest question is ‘Why’. For example: If you are making an app for instructors and have asked your first question which was asking the person to describe their day. And if they mentioned that they would starting by stating their objectives in the beginning of the class — you could ask ‘Why’. So that you could know their intent. There could be so many ‘why’s within a response that would help you gain deeper ‘empathy’.
Be Specific- The ‘Why’s can only go so deep and are secondary questions. Before the interview you ought to have thought of the broad set of questions to which you want answers for. These main questions should be specific and never vague. A question like — Generally how would you evaluate your students wont work — as there could be many answers and they would lead them to meander into different answers. Words like ‘Generally or typically or usually’ end up being too vague for the interviewee. Specific questions like — could you tell about the last time you gave a quiz to your students’ is far more specific and east for them to answer. And will also help you get specific answers.
Encourage stories — Always encourage them to tell their experience or expectations in an elaborate manner. A more elaborate story will help you understand how they would operate in the real world. For example: As the instructor takes your through their every day life in a class, its an opportunity for you to put yourself in those situations and relive the experience helping you gain empathy.
Often as product managers the problems we want to solve are never our own, these stories are our gateway to our users lives.
Look for inconsistencies — As I stated earlier the purpose of these interviews is not just to understand what the user says are their needs but also to identify the unstated needs. For example as a response to your questions the instructor may have said ‘He/She feels the students are not finding the quizzing software friendly enough which is why there is less participation’ in one place while to another question might have said ‘feedback from top performing students on quizzes have been very positive’. So the response is sort of inconsistent and while the stated need here is that of a more intuitive user experience for the quizzing platform, the unstated need could be getting students motivated enough to take the quiz on the platform. As we can see those who do take the quiz seem satisfied. So point being — inconsistencies are areas of interest! Don’t ignore them.
Importance of nonverbal cues — These interviews form the inputs to our ‘Empathy Map’ we discussed in earlier articles. And if you can recall, they include sections on what users ‘Feel’,’See’, ‘Hear’ etc. During the interview, the non-verbal cues will help us get a sense of what exactly are the users feeling when going through these experiences. There is a lot of difference between ‘I am finding it difficult to manage quizzes’ and ‘Oh my god, it is so tough to manage quizzes’. With the right expression we could see an ordinary complaint or utter frustration. So non verbal cues are as important.
Welcome silence — During the interview if for some reason there is a longer pause between answers, resist the urge to prompt and let them figure it out. Often it means they are recollecting their thoughts and may come with better insightful responses. So welcome silence and do not be afraid of them.
Practice neutral questions and never lead them to an answer — As PM’s with many ideas it might be tempting to structure your questions to confirm your bias towards a certain idea. However, it should be avoided. Any question that is leading is poorly framed. For example: Do you think multiple choice questions are bad?’ is a poorly framed question — a more neutral question would be ‘what is your opinion on ‘multiple choice questions’ in a quiz?
And once we have gleaned all the useful information from the interview, we can use the ‘Empathy map’ as a next step towards our design.
Just like that we are done with Part 2 of this series. Please feel free to leave a comment if there are any specific areas you would like me to write on as I ponder over Part 3.
Image credits: https://svgsilh.com/ms/image/28741.html
