Welcome distractions

Potential interviewees

Recently I’ve done a few user interviews via Skype, this has been incredibly useful as I meant that we didn’t have to travel to speak to users in other countries. I’ve done phone interviews before, but using Skype was much better. And it’s not because of the video.

We interviewed some people using video and others with just audio. I found the video interviews distracting, they had the same feel as when you interview with only a list of questions as stimulus. It’s all about eye contact and it feels very earnest, it’s uncomfortable for both sides. 

If this was a face to face situation like this I’d always have some paper stimulus (sketches, diagrams for mapping technology use/social interactions etc.) These help take the attention away from the fact that you are probing into people’s lives, ambitions, desires and let the conversation flow. Having something on the table to point at and discuss, makes things flow much better.

With Skype audio only, we were able to send through these kind of paper documents (in digital form) and talk them through with the users in an uninhibited way. This gave them something to distract them from the questions being asked and start to talk more openly. The conversation seemed to flow a lot easier.

When we did the same thing with video (send files etc) it still became stilted, we were drawn back to the eye contact thing. The stimulus was secondary to the video

So my thoughts at the moment are:

Audio only = awkward

Audio + Video = awkward

Audio + Video + Visual stimulus = better but video distracts in a  bad way, visual stimulus becomes secondary

Audio + Visual stimulus = good. visual stimulus distracts in a good way, just enough to get conversation flowing

If you have any similar experience, leave a comment to share with others