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8.3 Applications of interviews in HCI research 193

visits totaling around 3000 pages were analyzed by affinity clustering (Beyer
and Holtzblatt, 1998). The roughly 5000 photos taken during the visit were
analyzed as well.
This analysis led to a detailed understanding of participants' motivation,
practices, and choices. Motivations ranged from concerns about stewardship of
the earth to self-reliant tendencies and a desire to be sustainability trend-setters.
Participants tended to be very thoughtful about their choices, which frequently
involved an ongoing and gradual process. Many spoke of the continuing effort
required to maintain the systems and tools that they used, comparing the effort
to living on a ship. Participants were generally highly independent, valuing
uniqueness, but they also saw a value in teaching and providing an example to
others.
The research team used these perspectives to identify a number of
implications for design in support of sustainable behavior. Detailed, “in-depth”
learning opportunities, mentoring, and interactive tools that aid in the exploration
of the impact of various alternatives might help people make decisions regarding
the adoption of green tools. Social networking tools might also be used to help
people establish appealing green identities. Noting that broader adoption of
sustainable practices might require making these choices more approachable to
a broader population, the authors suggest the development of tools that would
support broader social change. Interactive technologies in support of digital
democracy aimed at changing environmental policy, sharing and distribution
of environmental data, and even construction of opportunities for social protest
might prove constructive in this effort (Woodruff et al., 2008).

8.3.2 REQUIREMENTS GATHERING
During the process of gathering requirements for the design of a new tool, interviews
can be invaluable for understanding user needs and concerns. Interviews conducted
at this early stage in the process are likely to be fairly broad. What are the user's
goals? How are they being met by current tools (if any are available)? What do users
want to do that they are currently unable to do? What are the frustrations? Are the
tasks associated with a given problem flexible enough to communicate with tools
that solve different, but related problems?
Interviewing in search of requirements requires an appropriately broad and open-
ended view of the possibilities. A focus on narrow questions or existing tools might be
too limiting. Instead, you might want to ask broader questions about current—possibly
noncomputer—practices, future goals, frustrations and concerns. You might even ask
your participants to try to describe things that they'd like to do, regardless of the ideas'
feasibility with current software: “If you could describe the perfect system for solving
your problem, what would it look like?”
Returning to the example of managing digital artifacts (Section 8.3.1), suppose
your initial interviews led to the idea of building a tool that would allow users to