Love your respondent Add/remove
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.
Tips to include participants who are not able to:
Focus
Emote
Speak
Hear
Think
Overview
Input
Basic knowledge about the user
Output
Empiric data
Complexity
Moderate
Time
1-3 hours+
Participants
1-2
Activity
- Communication
- Reflective thinking
Step by step:
Find and meet up with your user
Ask compassionate questions to try to understand the disconnections between what we believe, what people say, and what they do.
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.
Use encouragement to emphasize that the user should just say whatever they have in mind.
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.
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
