Interview recording

By now you should have set up a time to interview your human stakeholder. Using video conferencing, an audio recording app, or your phone’s camera, interview this person using the questions below as guidelines. 

Suggested interview questions:

• How do you use this system in your job? What does it help you accomplish?
• Does the system make your job harder or easier? In what ways?
• How do you feel about this system? Is it helpful? Frustrating? Boring?
• What are you good at that this system can’t do?
• How would your job be different without this system?
• Which has more control: you or this system? How so?
• Have you always used this system as part of this job? If not, how did you feel when you had to start using it?
• Are there things you think you should be able to do as part of your job, that this system stops you from doing?
• Do you think you or people you work with might be replaced by this system at some point? Why or why not?
• If you could talk with the people who built this system, what would you want them to know?

Best practices for interviewing someone you just met:

1. Introduce yourself and tell them what your project is about.
2. Tell them that you’re recording the conversation only for the purposes of the assignment.
3. Make it clear that you’re not evaluating them in any way. Identify yourself as a UT student, and tell them you want to learn more about the people who use systems like the one they use as part of their job.
4. Ask a question, listen closely to their answer, and then ask a follow-up question if they don’t say much. Good generic follow-up questions include:

“Can you say more about that?”

“I want to make sure I understand. Can you explain that a bit more?”

5. After you ask a question, give them time to think and answer; don’t immediately fill a silence with chatter. Try to listen more than you talk.
6. Use the suggested interview questions as a guide, but feel free to let the conversation go in another direction if it’s still relevant to the assignment.
7. Share your contact info (e-mail is sufficient) with your interview subject, and invite them to contact you if they have questions or concerns.
8. Thank them for their time, and offer to send them your write-up of the interview if they’re interested in seeing it.

Deliverable: A video or audio recording of the complete interview, or a link to the relevant file. If you conducted your interview in a language other than English, please note that in the filename.