Page 220 -

208 CHAPTER 8 Interviews and focus groups

FIGURE 8.2
Interview participants were asked to draw a secure web connection: a secure web
connection is (A) correctly depicted as protecting information transmitted from the PC to
the web server and (B) incorrectly depicted as secure data storage.
From Friedman, B., Hurley, D., Howe, D.C., Felten, E., Nissenbaum, H., 2002. Users' conceptions of
web security: a comparative study. CHI '02 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
Minneapolis, MN. ACM, pp. 746–747; https://doi.org/10.1145/506443.506510.

(Robson, 2002). If you find yourself writing such a question, break it up into multiple
simpler questions. Complex comparative questions may be particularly challenging
in this respect. Instead of asking “What were the strengths and weaknesses of the
menu layout and the toolbar?,” ask separate questions: “What did you think of the
menu layout? What did you think of the toolbar? Which did you prefer?”
Your questions should be as unbiased and unjudgmental as possible. In particular,
you should watch out for phrasing that might encourage your interviewee to give you
the answer that they think you want to hear. This is another reason to prefer ques-
tions that ask “what do you think of…?” rather than “did you like…?” Particularly
if you're talking about something that interviewees know you (or your team) have
designed, asking if they like (or dislike) something or find it easy (or hard) to use,
might influence responses. Questions that ask people “Why do you like this design?”
(Robson, 2002) or “Don't you think this is hard to use?” are particularly troublesome
in this regard. Some suggest avoiding questions with negative answers—simply ask
“What did you think?” instead (Angrosino, 2005). You may find it hard to completely
eliminate questions that have subtle potential for bias, but avoiding the worst pitfalls
should not be too difficult.
You should construct questions that are appropriate for your audience. If
your audience consists of well-educated professionals—similar to many HCI
researchers—language that you are comfortable with may work well for your par-
ticipants. Interviews or focus groups with participants with substantively different
backgrounds from those of the researcher pose additional challenges—you have to
learn to “speak their language.” For example, interviews or focus groups involv-
ing young children may fare better if appropriately designed questions and options
for answers are used. Instead of using a Likert scale for a closed question regard-
ing subjective reaction to a system, you might consider using the “smileyometer”