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Have you ever tried to get feedback on your interface design concept? Well, it’s not so easy. The interview is a usability method away from the typical wireframes that will help you obtain qualified input for your interface design purposes. It is designed to reveal particular feelings and opinions that potential end users of your user interface design may have. The interview is a one-on-one technique that focuses on a small sample of potential end user, which allows you to go into more detail on the requirements for your interface design. What are the benefits of an interview? Due to its nature, the interview is a usability method that is very useful for uncovering the opinions of individual potential end user of your website or software interface design. The small sample size usually required allows the interviewer to go into much more detail in his interviews than would be possible in standardized interface design surveys. As the interviewer and the interviewee are in direct contact during an interview session, misunderstandings are easy to clear up immediately, which gives additional validity to the results of the interview. In addition, interviews allow for an adaptation of the questions to the answers of the interviewee. Oftentimes, it is sufficient to interview only about 5-6 candidates to obtain useful results for your interface design concepts. What you need for an interview In order to conduct an efficient interview that will help you improve your user interface design, you need a number of prerequisites. First of all, you should be clear on the goals of your interview and on who will receive the information gathered during the interview. In particular, you should ask yourself “what information do I need to improve my interface design” and “how will I utilize it”? There are different kinds of interviews. Often, a structured or semi-structured interview is ideal as it allows you to compare the individual results but still adapt your interview to the specific situation. It is helpful to use an “interview schedule” or “interview guide” that lists all the required information you need for your interface design. You should have a specific question for each required bit of information that you can ask during the interview. Remember that open questions will allow the candidate to give you a lot of subjective information while closed questions may restrict the choice to yes or no. Choose the right style of asking for each interview question. The next step is to find the appropriate sample of candidates for your interview. Often, 5-6 interview candidates will be sufficient for most interface design purposes, but you may need more. You should give some thought to the ideal way to record the feedback you need for your interface design. Options include taking written notes during the interview, recording it on tape or video, or even having a second person take notes. Finally, you need an appropriate location to conduct your interview. Make sure that your candidates feel comfortable to talk freely during your interview. How to conduct the interview Generally, it is useful to develop a consistent routine for your interviews. Many people involved in interface design like to structure their interviews into four phases: The “nurturing phase”, the “energizing phase”, the “body phase”, and the “closing phase”. Other interviews are structured into an “opening phase”, a “fact-finding phase”, an “evaluation phase”, an optional “decision phase”, and a “closing phase”. In the end, both models recommend that you start out with an introduction that should make the candidate feel at ease. Then you should clarify the nature of the interview and its purpose. The largest part of the interview is then reserved for gathering the information required for optimizing your Interface Design. In the end, it is useful to have some wrap-up time to summarize what has been said or learned, to note open issues or plan next steps. Evaluating your interview Your interview would be wasted time if you didn’t end up with some useful information in the end that you can utilize to improve your interface design. So you need to make sure that you do a proper analysis of your interviews. This can be difficult if you have not followed a certain structure in your interview. While there are different options, it is often useful to extract certain key conclusions or propositions from the interviews that you can then back up with what the interview candidates have said during the interviews. ==================== About the Author: ==================== Pidoco.com – Interface Design, Wireframe Software, Interface Design Software, Clickable Wireframe and GUI Prototyping Tool. A GUI Design Interface Software for Clickable Wireframes! Wireframe creating and GUI prototyping tool. Fast wireframe creation and remote website usability testing lead to an improved conversion!
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