General Interview Tips

Finally, we found that when we were gathering the responses for this paper, many reported general thoughts about interviewing, a reflection (we think) of the limited work in visualization research that speaks specifically about how to conduct interviews.

  1. Body cues: Participants will pick up on your nonverbal cues, so be aware of the message you are signaling. For example, if you smile and nod at an answer, you are implicitly telling the participant you agree with their answer.

  2. Know the culture of your participants: Interviews are inherently conversational and many conversations are structured around norms and cultural expectations. Consider how culture may impact the way you ask questions, whether you want to engage in small talk beforehand, or what level of decorum is expected and appropriate.

  3. Plan time to connect & reflect: We found that across interviews, even though the strategies were different, the interviewers benefited from discussing the interview and reflecting on what they observed and heard.

  4. Record the interviews and use a transcription service: Use a reliable audio recording device (and video if you are interested in gestures). There are many auto-transcription services on the web, but these services are trained on white male native-English speakers (typically) so there is a possibility that you may want to find funding to have someone transcribe your interviews.

  5. Pilot, pilot, pilot: Pilot interviews are an excellent way to test out the flow of the interview and receive feedback from the pilot participants. We found this type of feedback and practice invaluable and often tweaked the interviews as a result of the feedback we had received.

Other Resources

There are also many resources how to conduct interviews, we list a few here:

  • For a general overview of evaluation methods in visualization research: Carpendale, S. Evaluating information visualizations. Information visualization: Human-centered issues and perspectives (2008), doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70956-5_2

  • For the two-on-one interview method from psychology: Monforte, J., Úbeda-Colomer, J., Tinkering with the two-to-one interview: Reflections on the use of two interviewers in qualitative constructionist inquiry, Methods in Psychology (2021), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.metip.2021.100082.