< Methods

Why?

Learn from potential users of your new product and other stakeholders

How?

Interviews allow you to better understand users and other stakeholders by gathering their opinions, behaviours, goals, attitudes and experiences. Invite representative participants from each stakeholder group, make them feel comfortable and ask questions about your topic of interest (e.g. product usage). Report on your interviews in an appropriate way.

Ingredients

• Typically 5 to 10 interviewees, representing the relevant stakeholders.
• A clear goal for what you want to obtain.
• An interview guide with topics or questions.
• Active listening skills
• The ability to improvise and ask 'why' a lot.
• A plan for how to capture and analyse the interview results.

In practice

Interviews are widely used throughout IT projects, but often in the early stages of a project.

Phase(s) of use

In the following project phase(s) interview can be used:

• Analysis
• Problem definition

Scales