Playbook for universal design

Universal design methods for more inclusive solutions

Extreme User Interview Add/remove

Purpose:

The purpose of an extreme user interview is to gather insights from people who are either extremely familiar or completely unfamiliar with the product/service you are designing. The interview can both be used to identify what the problem is with the maybe already existing product/service or to test a new product/service as the method will highlight key issues/new opportunities for improvement.

Step by step Facilitating tips Materials needed Goes well with

Tips to include participants who are not able to:

See

If you or your participants can not see it would be a good idea to have someone with you when conducting interviews that can see how the user interacts with the product/service. You can still ask interview questions but will not be able to observe how the user interferes with your product/service, why it would be beneficial to have someone with you who can see.

Focus

If you or your participants have prepared an e.g. 1,5 hour long interview with your user, but you have a hard time concentrating for that long, arrange little breaks or bring along a co-interviewer so that you can take turns asking questions.

Speak

If you or your participants can not speak you could bring along a translator that uses sign language and can be the mediator between you/the participants and the user.

Hear

If you or your participants can not hear you could bring along a translator that uses sign language and can be the mediator between you/the participants and the user.

Think

If it is overwhelming to come up with an interview guide, prepare the interview guide in bits and preferably not alone. Find someone in your design team that can assist you in making the interview guide.

Hold

If you or your participants can not hold on to a pen and therefore can not take notes you could either record the interview or bring a helper that could not down the answers.

Overview

Input

Interviewguide

Output

Problems or key aspects to improve

Complexity

Simple

Time

1-3 hours

Participants

1-3

Activity

Core abilities:

  • Ask question
  • Take notes

Step by step:

  1. Identify users that fall under the following categories:

    1. Extremely familiar with your product/service
    2. Complete unfamiliar with your product/service
    3. Loving fan of your product/service
    4. Utterly hate your product/service

  2. Conduct interviews with each of the user groups separately.

When doing this method you should consider:

Make sure you prepare interview questions that are specific so that you get specific feedback making it easier for you to identify problems or opportunities for improvement.

If you have the time, find more than one person from each of the different user categories and interview multiple people.

If you choose to use the method within a workshop, divide your users in groups of 2-3 participants so the person being interviewed is not overwhelmed.

When conducting the interview it would be beneficial if you have the opportunity to show a mockup or prototype that the users can interact with. Having a boundary object like a physical/visual representation of your product or service makes the feedback in the interview much more valuable.

If you want to add an extra layer to the method you could include a voting method within the interview and make the user vote/argue why certain things are good/not good from their perspective.

Materials needed:

  • Interview guide
  • Pens
  • Paper