Interview Design Process and Questions
The goals of this interview are to find out my partner’s research interests, what kind of group projects she may be interested in working on, and how she thinks project groups should be determined.
From the goals, I know that there are two topics we must cover during the interview: research interests, and group work.
With that in mind, I wanted to design a set of questions of different types that help me learn as much as I can about my partner’s thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes regarding the two topics in order to reach the determined goals.
There are 3 question types that I used in this interview.
Questions that gather context and details:
These are questions that I planned to ask my partner during the 10 minutes overview of each topic. The purpose of these questions is to give me a general idea of her thoughts on the two topics, helps her to open up, and start building rapport with her so that she feels more comfortable to disclose more details later on.
For this section, I start from very general questions about her background and goals to ease her into the upcoming questions regarding research interests. In the best-case scenario, she already has an idea of what exactly that she wants to do and will give me a lot of information. However, to prepare for the case that she may not feel comfortable enough with me to start talking about her ideas and thoughts right away, or if she is still wondering what her research interests are and doesn’t have clear answers, I weaved in suggestions of where she may find inspiration into my questions (reading materials, the news, what’s happening to her and her community recently, things that she’s curious about), to make the questions easier to answer.
Questions that probe what’s been unsaid
Once she has given me some areas that she’s interested in learning more about, I used these questions to probe for more details and clarification of the research interests that she mentioned in the overview section.
Questions that compare and contrast to uncover metal models
These are questions that I used mostly for the group work topics to find out more about how she views group work and how project groups should be determined by comparing several ways of working.
Documentation of Interview Questions
Before the interview starts, I created a document to guide myself through the interview process with all questions that I planned to ask during the interview and time allotted to them.
Introduction (5 min)
· Ask for consent to record session
· Start recording
· Confirm timing
· Who I am and why are we doing this
1. I’d like to talk with you today about your research interests and how you think project groups should be determined. I have a lot of questions to ask and I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics. There’s no wrong answers, all information are helpful.
Overview of Research Interests (10 min)
2. Can you tell me a little about yourself — for example, your background, experience, hobbies, etc.?
3. What do you hope to get from this class? (may follow up with questions regarding their larger goals of being in this program, and/or future career goals, or ask them to explain more or go into specific details)
4. Is there anything you have read recently that piques your interest? (Follow up questions: Could you elaborate on that? Why do you find it interesting?)
5. Is there anything in the news recently that you want to learn more about? (Follow up questions: Could you elaborate on that? Why do you find it interesting?)
6. Is there any topic that you have always been curious about but never got the opportunity to explore and learn more about it? (Follow up questions: Could you elaborate on that? Why did you choose this phenomenon?)
7. What do you think are some problems/adversities that you, or someone you know, or your community is facing? (What else?)
Exploring Specifics (what kind of group projects) (10 mins)
8. You mentioned (specific topic from overview). Is there any project that have been done in this area that you think is inspiring? Why? Is there any aspect of that project that you think can be done differently?
9. You mentioned (specific topic from overview). Is there anything in this area that you think can be explored more? Why is that?
10. If you can work on a project with no time constraint, no budget limit, and no stakeholders to answer to but yourself, what would you like to work on among the areas of interest that you have stated (insert specific topics from overview)? (Follow up questions: Could you elaborate on that? Why did you choose this topic?)
11. You mentioned (specific problems from overview). What do you think is the most pressing issue? If you could choose one of these problems to solve, what would you choose? Why? (How are you, someone you know, or your community dealing with this problem? Is there anything you think can be done differently?
Overview of Group Work (10 min)
1. Describe your ideal teammates to work on a project together. (What else? Why do you value these attributes in a teammate?)
2. How would you describe an ideal group project experience? How different is this ideal compared to your most recent group project experience?
3. Some people prefer to work with people of similar background and interest, while others don’t? What is your take?
4. How do you feel about working on a group project that is outside of your comfort zone? How about a group project that is outside of your areas of interest?
Exploring Specifics (what kind of group) (10 mins)
5. Do you prefer defined or undefined group roles? What do you think is the most effective group structure?
6. What size of teams do you prefer working in (number of people)? Could you explain why?
7. How do you feel about working with people from different time zones? (Do you prefer asynchronous or synchronous coordination?)
8. What are some difficulties that you have experienced while working in a group?
Interview Synthesis
Affinity Cluster
From her responses, I identified recurring themes, interesting observations and insights that emerged from the interviews, and put them into an affinity cluster.
Affinity Cluster
From the insights and observation from the interview recorded on the affinity cluster, I created an empathy map for my partner.
Insights
About my partner: She was much more open than I expected, which is good and makes the interview process easier. It didn’t take too long to build rapport and for her to feel comfortable enough with me to open up. It helps that she already has a clear idea of the things that she wants to do. She keeps a journal to jot down her ideas and things that she wants to learn and had that journal ready when we started the interview. The areas that she’s interested in all seem to support her goal of becoming a UX designer after graduation which she made clear early in interview that she’s quite sure and determined about. She seems like a very diligent and curious person who has some unusual ideas but also very practical about what is helpful for her goal. She wants teammates who share her discipline, seriousness and focus. She is quite wary of past experience with teamwork where teammates didn’t contribute to the project, held back their opinions, refused to collaborate, and resented people who actively contributed to the project. She has been misunderstood in the past as being too bossy while she was trying to move the project along when teammates were not doing much and not being proactive.
About the interview: The interview was different from what I expected, so it was good to have a detailed field guide ready to guide the conversation and the flow of the interview. We encountered some technical difficulties at first, which I didn’t account for when I made my interview plan so we lost a bit of time. But we were able to move on from it and go into the interview right after that without any more hiccups.
