Cross-examining your interview skills

Information architecture professionals rely on gathering information and insights from stake-holders and users for success. Regardless of the format of the final deliverable, the result is dependent on the interviews we conduct. Shared information environments present the challenge of learning the information needs and goals of a myriad of different user types. To prioritise and balance content successfully, information architects rely on data from user and stake-holder interviews among other things.

Newbies to the field and seasoned practitioners who continue to hone their interview skills will get the most out of every session, and better research leads to better strategy and design decisions.

This presentation aims to give attendees practical tips to improve how they plan and conduct effective interviews. It will introduce techniques that finesse their lines of question, save interviewers from stonewallers and blabbermouths and prime them for non-verbal cues.

While some conference presentations in the past have tackled how to run usability tests as a research methodology, there is little industry discussion of interview skills specifically.

Attendees at all levels of career experience will leave the session feeling more confident that they can get something valuable out of every interviewee, every time.

The techniques and tips will be taken from on-the-job experience, the motivational interview approach applied by clinical psychologists and usability testing, behavioural interviewing and contextual inquiry best practice, such as Indi Young’s Mental Models and HFI’s Designing for Persuasion, Emotion and Trust.