User Experience 2008
Chicago
Nov 2-7		 Amsterdam
Nov 16-21

Interviewing and Survey Techniques

  • Chicago: Tuesday, November 4
  • Amsterdam: Tusday, November 18

John Morkes
Full-Day Tutorial

To effectively define features or recommend design improvements, you must know what and how end users think. Interviews and surveys provide rich data to that end, but these techniques must be conducted carefully.

This tutorial will show you how to choose the appropriate data-collection method, recruit participants, write the questions, analyze the responses, and report the findings.

To illustrate what to do—and which mistakes to avoid—we’ll examine many examples and do exercises. As time permits, we’ll also review examples of participants’ own surveys.

What You’ll Learn

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

  • Design and conduct interviews and surveys (even on a tight budget)
  • Select the right data-collection method (online survey, paper survey, phone interview, face-to-face interview, etc.)
  • Write (or obtain) effective questions
  • Extract more data from participants
  • Ask leading questions without breaking the rules
  • Use scales and indices to improve data collection and analysis
  • Recruit participants/respondents
  • Analyze data
  • Turn qualitative data into quantitative data

Course Outline

  • What to ask about in interviews and surveys
  • How to select the right data-collection technique
  • Defining your research questions
  • Interviews
    • Interview pros and cons
    • Interviews on a budget
    • The best times to do interviews
    • Selecting the appropriate interviewing technique (phone, face-to-face, focus group, etc.)
    • The question of observation
    • How many participants? Who are they?
    • Where to find participants
    • Good interview questions
    • Bad interview questions
    • Guidelines for conducting the interview
    • How to squeeze more data out of the interview
    • Analyzing the data
    • How to report the results
    • The best ways to mess up your interview
    • Interviews and focus groups
  • Surveys
    • Survey pros and cons
    • Surveys on a budget
    • Examples of good and bad surveys
    • How many respondents? Who are they?
    • Where to find respondents
    • The best times to do surveys
    • Selecting the right type of survey (online, phone, paper, face-to-face, etc.)
    • How to design the survey
    • Defining the quantitative and/or qualitative measures
    • Open- vs. closed-ended questions
    • Response scales and indices
    • Where to find scales and indices
    • Good survey questions
    • Bad survey questions
    • Guidelines for conducting the survey
    • Analyzing the data
    • How to report the results
    • Validity and the best ways to mess up your survey
  • Review examples of tutorial participants’ own surveys (as time permits)

Format

This full-day tutorial includes exercises, Q&A, and discussion throughout.

Handouts

Copies of all presentation slides

Who Should Attend:

This tutorial is intended for people who want to broaden their knowledge of data-collection techniques. This includes usability engineers, marketing professionals, product managers, business analysts, user experience designers, user interface developers, and managers. Suggested prerequisites are knowledge of Web usability issues and experience collecting feedback from end users.

Instructor:

photo of Dr. John Morkes John Morkes is co-founder and Principal at Expero Inc., a consulting firm specializing in the definition, design, and usability of user experiences for complex websites and applications. Morkes’ recent clients include eBay, Fonts.com, Freescale Semiconductor, Oracle, Sprint Nextel, TiVo, and the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Previously, he was the Director of Human-Computer Interaction at Trilogy Software, where he led efforts to improve the usability of the Nissan and Ford websites, which Forrester Research rated as the two best consumer sites in the industry. Morkes has worked as a usability engineer for Sun and HP and as a journalist for Wired and R&D Magazine. He received a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He has presented tutorials at Nielsen Norman Group conferences for the last nine years.