Interview

Why?

An interview is a qualitative research method that uncovers deep insights into the underlying motivations, beliefs, attitudes and feelings of users or other stakeholders. Thus, the students use this method to obtain systematic knowledge about matters that call for a deeper, human-oriented understanding.

How?

The teacher asks the students to state the purpose of their investigation at the center of a big poster. Around this statement, the students either write or draw related themes that need to be covered through the interview. Now, with this poster as a base, the students create an interview guide that ensures a relevant knowledge production. The students can either make a structured interview guide with a set of predetermined questions that they asks chronologically, or a semi-structured interview guide, guided by a framework of topics and a set of open-ended questions. Whereas the former ensures the comparability of interviewees as respondents are asked the exact same questions in the same order, the latter enables flexibility for further exploration of the problem.

During the interview, the students may use the following guidelines:

• Be attentive to verbal and nonverbal communication
• Be well-informed on the topic
• Be polite
• Be clear and ask precise questions
• Be critical
• Be interpretive; “Does that mean…?”

In order to make sense of the collected data, the students look for similar traits and patterns between respondents. For example by numbering each question, or by giving each respondent or response a specific code. There exist many computer programs that can assist the students in this analysis such as Nvivo or Leximancer. Please view the literature for further information on how to prepare and carry through an interview.

Tips

During the interview, the students create a mind map or a user journey in cooperation with the interviewee in order to create a visual understanding of the problem (see User-Journey).

Literature

Curry, Leslie (23th June 2015) Fundamentals of Qualitative Research Methods: Interviews (Module 3).
Yale University. Accessed 19. November 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PhcglOGFg8
Kvale, S. (2007;2008;). Doing interviews. Los Angeles, Calif; London;: SAGE.
Kvale & Brinkmann (2009) Interviews – Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing.
2th ed. SAGE Publications, 2009