Stop doing user interviews. Start having conversations. (medium.com)
6 years ago from Nicola Rushton, Product Designer & Researcher
6 years ago from Nicola Rushton, Product Designer & Researcher
I mean, wouldn't be like a job interview? A good job interview you'll have some key questions and talking points, but to be successful it's more of a frank discussion?
Because you need to make sure you stay on point and find information you're looking for, but still discover other user needs.
Plus, the users I work with are incredibly passionate about their jobs, so they tend to have very strong opinions for or against our products, so we can have extremely detailed conversations.
I really want to meet the person who treats a user interview like an interrogation.
This was a good article. I read the conversations / interviews at https://www.digitalcomputerarts.com --- those they interview with have to pick a topic and expand on that while covering past work on that topic. Clever reads.
I love interviews. From both sides. I've always treated them as "a conversation". Never nervous, always excited.
If you think about it, it's just you, and someone else, sitting down, talking about the thing we love so much. It's easy. Just make it natural. Have a chat. If you're the right fit, you're the right fit! If not, no sweat!
Before the interview, don't do your research because you want the job - dot it because you want to find out if you want the job!
Anecdote: my favorite interview ever was with a Sydney based company: formerly Roamz, now Local Measure.
I wasn't the match they were looking for, but we had a great chat over a coffee. Just went out to a local cafe and sat down, shooting the breeze, talking about how amazing the industry was, and what type of work we'd done.
In fact, I think they told me after 15-20 minutes that my skillset wasn't what they were looking for, but it went for another 45, because it was just a good chat!
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