Components of an Interview protocol

An Interview protocol is basically a guideline for how to conduct an interview.

In order to have a meaningful interview with any user, you will have to do some preparation. Such preparations would help make interview more relevant and meaningful for your user. The preparation is usually deciding on what kind of questions you would ask each category of user and what's the actual focus of interview.

An Interview protocol usually has these major components:

• Overarching question
• Introduction
• Main interview
• Observation
• Conclusion

There should be one set of Main interview, Observation and Conclusion for every type of interview participant.

Overarching question: Overarching question is that one super important question which you want to get the answer for, because of which you organized the interview in first place. This question wouldn't necessarily be asked to participant directly, but it has to be kept in mind throughout the interview so that it guides the conversation with participant. It is recommended to have just one overarching question to ensure enough focus.

Introduction: This is where you will first introduce yourself, orient your parti with what's the whole point of interview, it's duration and the way you will use the data from this interview. Interview ethics also have to be dealt with in this particular section. Inform participant on the confidentiality of the information they provide and that their participation is purely voluntary. In fact, ethics of interviews allow participants to quit anytime in between the interview. Also take permissions from the participant to record their interview if necessary. Audio recording is not just ethics, it's also against the law to do so without explicit consent.

Main interview: This is the actual section of interview. You should have a series of questions ready with you, relevant to the overarching question. It's not compulsory to ask these questions in order or even to ask all of the questions. These questions are prepared to help guide your pathway of conversation. This main body of interview can actually be divided into two sections:

• Warm up: It's best practice to start with short and simple, close-ended questions to help gain the momentum and to gradually sink into the topic. Starting easy is the best way to build rapport with participants which can help open them up for core questions.
• Core questions: These are the actual questions for which you did rest of the parts. Core questions try to get a broader answer for your overarching question which means these should be in some way shape or form relevant to overarching question. These will often be open ended to invite deeper discussions and you have to find a way to build conversations exactly here.

Observation: This is usually an optional section that you can include in the interview for user needs assessment. Basically, you can ask the users to use the product in front of you while you sit there and quietly observe them. You can have two different parts here:

• Think-aloud protocol: Participant will interact with your product to perform a certain task or test a particular feature while they speak aloud what's going on in their mind. Such a section is usually helpful to answer questions like if a particular button is easily visible to an user or they have to struggle a bit before reaching there.
• Observation questions: Once you have let the participant complete the task on their own, you can use next few minutes to ask anything that's in your mind. It can be with respect to what you saw during their task execution or anything else that's relevant.

Conclusion: Take this opportunity to ask participants for any feedback about the product that wasn't covered in interview. Let the participant know that you would reach out to them again for any follow up questions and will also report back with highlights of the study you're conducting. Further, make sure to thank them for sparing their valuable time on research and provide them with promised incentive if any.

The interview protocol is really just a guideline and not a hard rule that needs to be followed. Utmost important thing that you need to ensure in an user interview is to follow the ethics. User's best interest and their requests have to be taken care of even if that means you wouldn't get the most of the interview. Once ethics are taken care of, ensure that the questions you wanted to be answered are answered. As long as the interview takes care of these, any variation in interview protocol is a welcome change.

Source: Understanding User Needs course by Kentaro Toyama from University of Michigan !!