Client / User group interview

Why Client Interviews Are Important

Client Interviews are little more than a good old fashioned chat. They do however play a very special role: They help you to understand your client’s problems at a deeper level and they help your client to see you as an authority, and someone in whom they can place their trust.

How to find out what your user group want

The most popular ways of finding out what your user group want, would be to design and conduct a User (Group) / Clientinterview. The key to successful research is to ask the right questions. If your questions are not thought through, then the answers will not give you information that will help you to generate design solutions to match your client / user group’s needs. A Client / User interview is a better form of research than a Questionnaire. Ask a rubbish question and you will get a rubbish answer! This could be referred as ‘Garbage in = Garbage out’.

You need to establish exactly what your user group want the product to do and any particular features they would like the product to have. You may also want to ask them what aesthetic qualities they would like the product to have. The design of a User / Client interview is critical in order to get the kind of answers that allow design decisions to be made. You should always try to test an interview before using it. In general, shorter interviews are usually better than long ones as you have more chance of people completing them, but the more you can get your Client / User to say (write) the better. You will also use your interview(s) later in your project to help guide the writing of your specification – this is very important, and as part of your evaluation and testing.

How to present this information in a suitable format

Conducting an in-depth interview with your User (group) / Client will give you valuable information and insight into what their needs are. Think carefully about the questions you will ask and record the responses from each interview. It would also be beneficial for you to record, in some way, the interview taking place. This could be done through a photograph of you conducting the interview or could even be recorded on a video camera / mobile phone. The responses then need to be presented in a format that makes the information accessible. You should aim to try and ask between 10-15 questions showing your results either in graph or chart format (Questionnaire) or through typing the questions and responses onto a document to present the information. If you use a video recording you could insert and embed this into a document.

As mentioned above the wording of the questions is vitally important. The questions should be:

· Relevant – only include questions that target the information required

· Clear – avoid long words, jargon and technical terms; questions must be easy to understand

· Inoffensive – take care with questions about age, social class, salary, ethnicity, so as not to cause offence

· Brief – short questions of less than 20 words

· Precise – each question should tackle one topic at a time

· Impartial – avoid ‘leading’ questions that influence the answer

Possible questions you could ask could be based around:

Aesthetics (look of the design), safety, styling, trends, technology, materials, Environmental issues, renewable energy, age group, colour, finish, type of style client / user group would prefer, comfort, price or costing – what the user group are prepared to pay for the product you are designing, size of product, packaging, presentation, logo / company name or information – what company brands do you associate with quality or ‘coolness’? Does this affect your judgement?

To be successful you will:

· Write a clear, concise Client / User group interview that asks relevant questions to aid your design concept generation and solve the problem

· Ask more than one person

· Use photographs and video to record that the interview took place

· Use video and products to demonstrate points

· Present your results clearly

· Write a Client / User group interview that will guide your Design Specification