Remote Interview Guidance

• Team: One interviewer + One observer ( 2 Designer/ Researcher)
• Format: Semi structured interview conducted remotely ( Zoom alternative Google Hangout )
• Designer: Interviewer
• Participant: Interviewee
• Designer: Observer

Zoom set up:

The best options for the design team is that, interviewer to be host of the meeting. It was observed + experienced that, interviewer should use two devices with visual input and output. According to our various iterations most effective set up is usage for us is that, laptop and phone combination especially you are using zoom as a main software to organize your interview.

For the first part of the interview attaching phone to tripod (If available) or locating it to stable position will be useful. (This will provide opportunity to sketch more seamlessly also this will help designer to avoid ergonomically discomfortable postures). Another options is that, if it possible one of the member of designer team can visit interviewee location physically, in that case we suggest designer sketch out journey of interview with preferably using traditional tools( pen/paper/marker) use surrounding items as prob if they are related to the topic of interview.

For the second part of the interview, interviewer can detach the phone from tripod and hold the phone on the one hand to navigate over the journey map and use it as a pointer. It is significant that even we are working remotely. We still obtain touch-ability and physical pointers while conducting the interview. (This one of the most significant advantage of this tool, to create visual probs so that interviewee can recall detail of their experience by looking into visual metaphors/clues )

Adaptation of this technique can lead into surprise discoveries. We support designers to practice this method and putting into their own instincts + feelings and evolve this broad description into their own material/approach. You can find resources to improve your visual thinking . The one of the leading expert in the field is Eva_Lotta-Lamm and Spencer Nuget .IF you know more senseis feel free to mention in the comments...

Interviewee will be motivated to focus on the experience they lived thought and resonate with the detail of the interaction. Best case scenario (depending on skill and experience level on interviewer) interviewee will dig deeper reveal psychological impact of the specific context or situations. As a final note, we tried co-sketching seasons with participant, in our experience, in this iteration amount of quality information we gathered decreased. On the hand, some teams discovered this co-sketching approach was more valuable. In conclusion, I believe effectiveness and quality of this approach depends on what kind of designer you are.

Going into detail

First iteration of interview should dedicated to be around 15–20 min long afterwards interviewer and designer team should have time off to reflect on the first round of the interview and highlight the opportunity areas on exciting journey map. This will also give extra time to participant for relaxing and reducing their cognitive stress. We advice designer team to apply antagonistic thinking. Before starting second stage. One tips, would be redrawing your map/visuals if it is not intuitive. Especially, for non-designer participants might have challenging time to follow you up.

The purpose behind journey mapping methods are learning about people experience, stories perspective about specific service, community or product and threshold/speculate what might happen. Antagonistic thinking is mentality is approach we suggest for the designers to follow, we should constantly speculate about dystonia and Utopian scenarios to understand and reflect upon how we should move forward and what kind of questions we should narrative during the interview. Designer should consider extreme cases and motive participants to imagine them self in those stories. Have conversation around how future implementation of concept/solutions/ideas would improve the current experience of the user.

Before starting second stage of the interview. We suggest that you prepare our most famous tool post notes!… Post notes can be used to sketch out opportunity windows, what if questions and highlights interesting outcomes for the future journey mapping. It is valuable to attach these note into exciting journey map to put emphasis on visual prob and creates focus point for the interviewee. As usually depending on your team choose, you can use digital tools instead of traditional tools. We discovered Zoom whiteboard future works smoothly more so if you are using tablet/digital pen devises instead of computer.

Second iteration of the interview should be expected to be longer since conversation focus on extracting specific details about certain experience. Additionally, there is familiarity factor which can lead Interviewee reveal more information thus extension of conversation. One of the important point to not miss out, sitting in front of computer more than 45 min can reduce cognitive skills and cause lost of attention. If you are aiming for longer interview, we suggest you divide your interview into different sections. Lastly, since it is remote interview, we cant use best Swedish innovation “the fika” to show our gratitude to our participants. Therefore, amazon gift cards and similar gift might be nice gesture to showcase your appreciation if you are professional designer, for students really on on your friend chips. One specific way to show our appreciation in our team was, we have written physical letter to our participant send them as thank you note.

Expected problems

Echoing: Firstly, be patient, this new situation for everyone. Best tips to avoid this problem is opening mic and speaker on the phone and closing mic and speaker on the computer.

Eye contact: Two have more eye contact with the interviewee is challenging. To have the technological advantage, interviewer should be asked to pin the interviewer in the zoom meeting. Additionally interviewer especially in the second iteration of the interviewer should balance between holding phone in stable position while looking into camera on the computer to maintain the eye contact.

If you have time check out great setup by DIY Perk

Discovery: We observed that interviewee closed their eyes time to time to envision and visualize the event in their head this can be interesting clue to investigate more in various application of remote journey mapping.

We organize our insight on Miro and we are feeling that we had good directions from our first trial.

Zoom recording functions works effectivity make sure you pin on the screen you are aiming to record and control the hard disk capacity of your devices.

Afterwards

In our application of remote journey mapping we used traditional tool and zoom software. Miro, used by designer team to organize our material and prepare them for Storytelling templates. However, depending on the topic and context it might be interesting to invite interviewee to Miro panel and conduct co-brainstorming seasons with them or application of various mapping tool in the Miro. Finally Iterate any enjoy and do not forget read Schensul Essential Ethnographic Methods to advance your overall interview skills.