Non-directed, Ethnographic Interviews

We do our best to shape the next stages of our product development around the real needs of current and potential clients. Our primary tool for discovering those needs is the non-directed, ethnographic interview. The format of the interview is a relaxed, 30-60 minute guided conversation between one of our product designers and a single interviewee.

By interviewing current and potential clients, we build a picture of what matters to them, what they think and worry about, the changes they anticipate in the next few years for higher ed and social media, and how all of that might affect their eagerness for different types of solutions to the problems they face. Ultimately, this allows us to keep both articulated needs and unstated requirements in mind as we plan for the future.

We choose our interviewees based on their key roles at their institutions and/or their status as thought leaders in higher ed. If you are invited to participate, relax – there’s no need to prepare. Think of it as just an informal, one-on-one chat. And if you’d like, we’ll let you know when your thoughts and needs are translated into great product designs that make us the most successful social software startup in the education space.

Aug 03, 2010

3 Comments »

Tags: Design

http://twitter.com/lexyholloway Alexandra Holloway

Wouldn't it be more prudent to run a focus group? One-on-one interviewing could detract from the social aspects that you're trying to study. A focus group lets you see the group dynamic between several subjects. Their social connections contribute to your design.

Howard Kao

Hi Alexandra!

To clarify, these interviews are with the directors, managers, and staff who would oversee the deployment of our product at their institutions. As for gathering insights about the students, the real-world laboratory of our active deployments currently provide plenty of data for us to process!

Back to individual interviews versus focus groups: they're both important tools, and we've used both in different situations. In this case, the people we are interviewing have high visibility into our area of inquiry, but limited wiggle room in their schedules. We want to make sure we have enough time with each of them to fully hear what they have to say but also ask a lot of follow up questions. Given their busy schedules, forming some sort of cross-institutional focus group would be impractical. Forming a focus group of people within a single institution would be more feasible, but in this case I think the benefit of participants being able to piggyback off each other's answers would be outweighed by the threat of self-censorship due to office politics.

Howard Kao

Hi Alexandra!

To clarify, these interviews are with the directors, managers, and staff who would oversee the deployment of our product at their institutions. As for gathering insights about the students, the real-world laboratory of our active deployments currently provide plenty of data for us to process!

Back to individual interviews versus focus groups: they’re both important tools, and we’ve used both in different situations. In this case, the people we are interviewing have high visibility into our area of inquiry, but limited wiggle room in their schedules. We want to make sure we have enough time with each of them to fully hear what they have to say but also ask a lot of follow up questions. Given their busy schedules, forming some sort of cross-institutional focus group would be impractical. Forming a focus group of people within a single institution would be more feasible, but in this case I think the benefit of participants being able to piggyback off each other’s answers would be outweighed by the threat of self-censorship due to office politics.

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