Tutorial #27

Interviewing Customers: Discovering What They Can't Tell You

Ellen A. Isaacs, SunSoft

Monday, April 15, half-day morning

Benefits

You will learn an approach to discovering customer's underlying needs for computer support. You will also learn basic interviewing skills, including ways to ask unbiased, open questions. Finally, you will learn methods for analyzing the information that you collect during customer interviews.

Origins

This tutorial is new for CHI 96.

Features

What you can learn from an interview
- contrasting interviews wtih other customer input methods
- what people can and cannot tell you about themselves
- how to look for information that customers won't be able to tell you
Preparing for the interview
- whom to interview and where to interview them
- what types of questions to ask
- how to record the information
Conducting the interview
- tips on good interviewing techniques
- many examples of good and poor interview questions
- exercises to practice interviewing
Interpring the data from interviews
- how to develop themes from the reams of data collected
- how to let the data drive the results
- how to find unexpected ideas for new features or products

Audience

Designers, developers, writers, managers, testers, marketers, and anyone else who needs to identify customer requirements and end-user needs.

Presentation

Lecture, demonstrations, and exercises.

Instructors

Ellen Isaacs is a Human Interface Engineer at SunSoft, where she has been interviewing customers on a regular basis over the past six years. Before receiving her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, Ellen was a professional newspaper reporter. She has combined her background in human information processing with her skills in interviewing as a reporter to develop techniques for learning about customers' needs and translating that information into design requirements.