Individual Interviews

• What is an individual interview?
• What can you learn from an interview?
• When should you conduct individual interviews?
• How do interviews differ from focus groups?
• How do you conduct an interview?

What is an individual interview?

Individual interviews typically refer to talking with one user at a time (for 30 minutes to an hour) face to face, by telephone, or with instant messaging or other computer-aided means. These interviews do not involve watching a user work. Thus, this is different from interviewing users in a usability testing session or conducting contextual interviews.

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What can you learn from an interview?

Individual interviews can give you a deep understanding of the people who come to your site. You can probe their attitudes, beliefs, desires, and experiences. You can also ask them to rate or rank choices for the Web site content.

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When should you conduct individual interviews?

One technique is to use individual interviews to supplement online surveys. You can do interviews first to refine questions for the survey. Or you can do interviews after a survey to probe for details and reasons behind answers that users give on a survey.

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How do interviews differ from focus groups?

Individual interviews resemble focus groups because they involve talking with users. The main difference between an individual interview and a focus group is that you are talking to one person at a time. In an individual interview:

• You have more time to discuss topics in detail.
• You do not have to worry about the group dynamics that inevitably occur in focus groups.
• You can give the interviewee your full attention and you can adjust your interviewing style to draw out a shy user or keep another user on topic.

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How do you conduct an interview?

• Select participants to represent the types of users you want to come to the Web site. (This is true of all the data-gathering techniques.)
• Decide what you want to learn. (This is also true for other data-gathering techniques.)
• Write an "interview protocol" for the interviewer to follow. (In focus groups, the comparable document is called a "script." An interview protocol includes questions and probes to use to follow up on questions.)
• Hire a skilled interviewer who will make interviewees feel comfortable, ask questions in a neutral manner, listen well, know when and how to probe for more details, and keep track of time unobtrusively.
• Allow the interviewer flexibility in using the protocol. (Although you want all the questions answered, this is not a survey but can be an opportunity to get a deep understanding of users.)
• Get permission to tape the sessions and have one or more people take good notes. (You are looking for answers to the questions and for insights about users that will help you build a Web site that meets their needs.)

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Next steps

You should use the information gathered from the internal interviews to supplement the other types of data you collect when you Learn About Your Users.

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