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224 CHAPTER 8 Interviews and focus groups

If you do decide to quote users directly, you should be careful to do so in accor-
dance with best practices for respecting human participants in research. Don't use
participant names. If you have to repeatedly refer to an individual, use initials or a
numeric code: S1, S2, etc. Don't use quotes that reveal any embarrassing or identify-
ing details. You should always inform participants that their words may be used in
research reports. This information should be explicitly included in the informed con-
sent form (see Chapter 15). For questions that address particularly sensitive issues,
you may wish to avoid quoting any interviewees directly.

8.11 SUMMARY
Interviews and focus groups present substantial challenges for HCI researchers
and practitioners. Writing questions, identifying appropriate respondents, conduct-
ing interviews, and analyzing data all require considerable skill and experience.
For those of us who come to HCI from a technical background, the social science
techniques and strategies that are involved may seem unfamiliar and somewhat
daunting.
Despite these concerns, interviews and focus groups are invaluable tools for HCI
researchers and practitioners, providing data into user and stakeholder needs and
perceptions that would be difficult, if not impossible to get using other techniques.
It's that simple—if you want to know what people want or what they think, you
must ask them. For researchers, this might mean in-depth conversations aimed at
building models to explain how systems are used and why. For designers and build-
ers of interfaces, interviews can help build understanding of needs and reactions to
interfaces. If you want to know why your last design failed, you can start by inter-
viewing the users.
The choice of one-to-one interviews or focus groups involves trade-offs in time,
expediency, depth, and difficulty. Focus groups let you hear from many people at once
but with less depth from any given individual. You should consider the trade-off be-
tween this loss of depth and the potentially fuller understanding that may arise from a
conversation between participants having multiple perspectives. Unfortunately, there
are no guarantees: this intriguing dynamic conversation might not materialize. As the
moderator of a focus group, you have a very important role to play: this is where the
difficulty comes in. Skillful moderation can keep conversation focused and inclusive,
increasing your chances of getting good data.
Interviews and focus groups might best be conducted as complements to other
data collection approaches. Empirical studies, usability tests, ethnographic investi-
gations, and case studies are among the methods that might be used alongside inter-
views. You can use multiple, complementary tactics to confirm findings or identify
potential disconnects. Perhaps users prefer one interface design over another, even
though it is slower. Why is this? Well-formed interview questions might help you
understand the reasons.