Love your respondent
Purpose
The purpose of love your respondent is to get to know your user on a more intimate level. This “method” is more to describe a way of communicating and acting with a user while doing field work than it is a specific method. It gives guiding tips on how to gain trust and build up a different layer of empathy than simply performing a regular user interview.
Accomodate participants who are not able to:
Input
Basic knowledge about the user
Output
Empiric data
Complexity
Moderate
Time
1-3 hours+
No. of participants
1-2
Activity required
Core abilities:
- Communication
- Reflective thinking

Step by Step
1 | Find and meet up with your user | 4 | Use encouragement to emphasize that the user should just say whatever they have in mind. |
2 | Ask compassionate questions to try to understand the disconnections between what we believe, what people say, and what they do. | 5 | Use judgement as a way to reflect, without letting it influence the direction of the interview. Whenever judgement occurs, reflect and think of the gap between your perception/values and theirs. |
3 | Show excitement to talk to the user, and ask questions like if you were to get to know a date or a long lost friend. | 6 | Do not be afraid to expose your vulnerabilities and show your flaws. That way, people will be able to relate to you more and less reluctant to open up. |

When doing this method you should consider
- Once you have established trust, they will be much more open to share things.
- Do not push to hard for information the user is not comfortable with
- If the user is not ready to open up try breaking the ice with your own experiences

Materials needed
