{
    "version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
    "content" : "news",
    "type" : "single",
    "title" : "Build Empathy With Stakeholder Interviews, Part 1: Preparation |Digital.gov",
    "description": "Build Empathy With Stakeholder Interviews, Part 1: Preparation",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2016/07/01/build-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-1-preparation/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"Build Empathy With Stakeholder Interviews, Part 1: Preparation","deck" : "What stakeholder interviews are, why they’re valuable, and how to prepare for them.","summary" : "What stakeholder interviews are, why they’re valuable, and how to prepare for them.","date" : "2016-07-01T10:00:26-04:00","date_modified" : "2025-01-27T19:42:55-05:00","authors" : {"andrew-maier" : "Andrew Maier"},"topics" : {
        
            "content-strategy" : "Content strategy",
            "human-centered-design" : "Human-centered design",
            "research" : "Research"
            },"branch" : "bc-archive-content-3",
      "filename" :"2016-07-01-build-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-1-preparation.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2016/07/2016-07-01-build-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-1-preparation.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2016/07/2016-07-01-build-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-1-preparation.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2016/07/2016-07-01-build-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-1-preparation.md","slug" : "build-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-1-preparation","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2016/07/01/build-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-1-preparation/","content" :"\u003cp\u003eA few weeks ago, the State Department held its first conference dedicated to user experience design, UX Exponential. The conference organizers invited me to speak, and in this two-part series, I’d like to summarize (as best as possible) the presentation I gave, “\u003ca href=\"https://speakerdeck.com/andrewmaier/foster-the-people-building-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews\"\u003eFoster The People: Building Empathy with Stakeholder Interviews\u003c/a\u003e.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this post, I’ll cover what stakeholder interviews are, why they’re valuable, and how to prepare for them. In \u003ca href=\"https://digital.gov/2016/07/29/build-empathy-with-stakeholder-interviews-part-2-conversation/\"\u003ethe second post\u003c/a\u003e, I’ll cover how to actually run the interviews as well as some tips for synthesizing and integrating the results into the team’s shared understanding. \u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/07/600-x-400-Social-Business-Meeting-Rawpixel-Ltd-iStock-Thinkstock-179604739.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Social Business Meeting\"/\u003e\u003cp\u003eRawpixel Ltd iStock Thinkstock\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBefore I continue: The idea of “explaining” stakeholder interviews is a rather audacious goal. Many authors have written entire books about the skills and perspectives necessary to do this work and apply it within the context of product design. I’ll do my best to summarize this subject, but interested readers are encouraged to peruse the books and articles cited at end of this series.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith that out of the way, let’s dive in.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"what-are-stakeholder-interviews-what-are-stakeholder-interviews\"\u003eWhat are stakeholder interviews? {#what-are-stakeholder-interviews?}\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs \u003ca href=\"https://methods.18f.gov/discover/stakeholder-and-user-interviews/\"\u003edefined\u003c/a\u003e in 18F’s Method Cards, stakeholder and user interviews (stakeholder interviews) are “a wide-spanning set of semi-structured interviews with anyone who has an interest in a project’s success, including users.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStakeholders come in all shapes and sizes. Indeed, given their interest in the project’s success, even your own teammates count as stakeholders! It’s ultimately up to researchers themselves to determine when and with whom they should chat. A good rule of thumb is to try and talk to the people who will spend the \u003cem\u003emost\u003c/em\u003e time using the thing you plan to design — but stakeholder interviews can also be useful for determining what that thing actually is.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow many times have you heard this?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Oh, if only I had been involved, I would have explained that to you sooner/told you that idea would never work/made everything right in the universe.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e—Kevin Hoffman\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBecause they can help inform your understanding of the people, behaviors, artifacts, and tools that you might affect by way of your work, stakeholder interviews should happen before a project’s “kickoff meeting.” This ultimately does three things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt raises important questions and surfaces any constraints for which you’ll need to account.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt builds trust by showing that you’re open to receiving feedback.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt drives alignment (something I’ve also called a “\u003ca href=\"http://ngenworks.com/design/an-unlikely-byproduct/\"\u003eshared understanding\u003c/a\u003e”) both inside and outside the team.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProperly executed, stakeholder interviews help you reduce the time it takes to reach a \u003cem\u003eviable\u003c/em\u003e solution for the people who will take receipt of your work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"plan-the-interviews\"\u003ePlan the interviews\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBefore you can interview stakeholders, though, you’ll need to identify who those people are: \u003cem\u003ewho cares or will be impacted by your work?\u003c/em\u003e The easiest way to do this is to group (or “segment”) stakeholders and users based on their role in relation to the problem you’re trying to solve.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePractically speaking, this means looking for groups of people who do things in a similar way. As Jon Kolko says in his book \u003cem\u003eWell Designed:\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe key is segmentation, but the segment[s] [we’re] looking for [aren’t] based on demographics or those funky marketing psychographics. Instead [we’re] going to sort potential participants based on [our] ability to watch real behavior. In a way [we’re] less interested in the people themselves than in what they do.”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStakeholder interviews help designers inform the three assumptions guiding their work (the “what,” “how,” and “why”). By talking to real people and observing them as they go about their real lives — using systems, artifacts, etc., that, importantly, may or may not have been designed with them in mind — you’ll learn more about what’s working the way it was intended and what might be improved.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis breaks into the following steps:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWrite down the \u003cstrong\u003ewhat.\u003c/strong\u003e What is the problem you’re trying to solve or the experience you’re trying to improve? (It’s okay if you don’t know this yet. Take a guess.)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSegment potential stakeholders and users into groups, or roles, based on \u003cstrong\u003ehow\u003c/strong\u003e you think people currently get things done relative to your “what.”\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWrite down \u003cstrong\u003ewhy\u003c/strong\u003e you think people do things the way they currently do.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIdentify a few people who can reasonably demonstrate the workflows and speak to the concerns of each of your previously identified groups. Put some time on people’s calendars. I try and talk to four to eight people, for at least 45 minutes each, per round of stakeholder interviews.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"consider-context\"\u003eConsider context\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNext you’ll want to think critically about the world(s) you’re about to enter.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStakeholder interviews allow designers to collaboratively explore complex domains with help from the people for whom their designing. The goal in conducting these interviews, however, is to \u003cem\u003efocus more on the people-scale problems than the problems affecting the domain itself.\u003c/em\u003e Said differently, you’re looking more for pain points that affect the people you talk to than things that affect the entire domain in which those people live or work — although the difference can be subtle.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the case of 18F’s work with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), for example, one round of stakeholder interviews focused on the “campaign filer” experience. Our team spent time talking with people who the file with the FEC on behalf of a campaign (“campaign filers”) as well as people who work at the FEC itself. This research helped our team better understand how the FEC’s existing tools — its existing website, forms, flyers, systems, etc. — help those who are filing and taking receipt of information about campaigns.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOur goal for this research wasn’t to learn everything about how campaign finance law works. Though 18F’s team has been able to develop a much stronger working knowledge of campaign finance over time, we didn’t need that knowledge to get started. We just needed to learn enough to ask our questions in a coherent way.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBefore coming up with your interview questions, ask stakeholders for any materials that they believe are essential to doing their job: What helps them get things done right now? Consider looking into books, blogs, mailing lists, meetup groups, etc. that are related to what they do. Even a quick glance over these materials helps ensure that you’ll use your time together wisely.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Aside: If your stakeholder’s time is especially limited, consider running a \u003ca href=\"http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/jumpstart-design-research-with-a-diary-study/\"\u003ediary study\u003c/a\u003e. Ask stakeholders to make brief logs of the tasks they accomplish every day over a short period of time.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"draft-your-questions\"\u003eDraft your questions\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnce you know enough to speak your users’ language, draft the questions you \u003cem\u003emight\u003c/em\u003e ask. I stress “might” here for a reason: many interviews naturally ebb and flow based on the person being interviewed and the tasks you’ve asked to observe (and, according to guidance we’ve received, that means stakeholder interviews aren’t subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act — but be sure to check with your agency’s PRA officer). Regardless, drafting questions forces you to roleplay and think strategically about the outcomes you want to achieve.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo fire up your favorite text editor and write down four to six areas or activities that you’d like to know more about. Then try and ask each of them in the form of a question.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGenerally speaking, the best questions are both open-ended and grounded in reality. The researcher’s rule of thumb is to \u003cem\u003eask “how” and “why,” then ask “how” and “why” again.\u003c/em\u003e For example, you might ask “can you show me how you manage your campaign’s finances?” and “why do you submit that form on a quarterly basis?”\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese questions are better than their closed, speculative counterparts. For example, “Do you think you’d use this if [we designed it differently?]” is a poor question because it will likely elicit a yes/no (closed) response. It also asks users to ponder a potential behavior, which often isn’t strictly up to them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinally, don’t be afraid to ask clarifying questions about simple things. People tend to shy away from asking clarifying questions because of how others might perceive them: no one wants to look stupid. Yet the goal here is to document your \u003cem\u003estakeholders’\u003c/em\u003e understanding — not your own — which means you should absolutely ask clarifying questions, even if you think you know the answer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"solicit-critiques\"\u003eSolicit critiques\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe last step before sitting down with stakeholders is to share your questions with your team and discuss. This isn’t about copyedits; it’s about making sure that everyone’s on the same page with regard to the scope of the interviews and the scope of the project itself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s also the option of soliciting critiques from people \u003cem\u003eoutside\u003c/em\u003e of the project team. For example, I’ve received a ton of great feedback from people on 18F’s content team about the language I’m using to ask my questions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"let’s-get-this-show-on-the-road\"\u003eLet’s get this show on the road\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd there you have it! In this first part, I’ve explained the rationale behind stakeholder interviews, how to document the assumptions guiding a study, how to consider context, how to draft questions, and when to invite your teammates into the process. In the next part, I’ll cover how to actually run the interviews as well as some tips for synthesizing and socializing what you learn.\u003cem\u003eThis post was originally published on the \u003ca href=\"https://18f.gsa.gov/blog/\"\u003e18F blog\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}