The two most commonly used qualitative methods in Media and Communication Studies are interviews and observations. Many of the specific processes, tools, and skill sets that researchers draw on when interviewing and observing form the basis of the contemporary UX methods that we outline in this book. Two other methods, focus groups and qualitative surveys, are also used frequently in qualitative academic research. Qualitative data is typically analyzed using a process called thematic analysis. This chapter provides a brief overview of interviews, focus groups, qualitative surveys, observations, and thematic analysis, as subsequent chapters assume reader familiarity with these basics of qualitative research.
Interviews
Interviews are, at the core, directed conversations, aimed at finding out some information. Interviewers ask interviewees questions to better understand their thinking, feelings, experiences, and motivations for behavior.
In academia, interviews are one of the most common methods used for qualitative research in social science fields such as Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication Studies, and Media Studies. They are used in academic settings where researchers are curious about how individuals perceive their social realities. As you probably know, interviews are not just a research methodâthey are common in other settings such as job seeking and news articles. The difference between interviews for research purposes and interviews for jobs or journalistic interviews is that researchers typically ask multiple people similar questions to draw a more generalized conclusion about a particular phenomenon, rather than diving deep into only one personâs story.
In UX research, interviews are usually used at the early stages of product design, in the Empathize stage, to find out what users want and need, and also to find out what they currently donât like about their experience. Because there are always other stakeholders involved in the creation of a website or app (e.g., the company that needs to make a profit, engineers that need to build the product), interviews are also used in industry to understand these various stakeholdersâ requirements of the product.
Before an interview, a researcher needs to create an interview guide, which is a set of questions that will be asked during the interview. Typically, interviews consist of open-ended questions, such as âhowâ or âwhyâ questions, to prompt the interviewee to provide in-depth, detailed answers. Interviews can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured, depending on the needs of the research (whether the research is more exploratory or whether the researcher has a sense of the important questions they need to be answered already). In structured interviews, researchers strictly follow the interview guideâall participants are asked the same set of questions in the same order. Semi-structured interviews take a looser approach, with the interviewer adding or removing questions as the conversation unfolds. And finally, an unstructured interview flows like a conversation, with the interviewer typically coming into the interview only with some general themes they would like to cover.
Itâs important for the interviewer to build rapport with the person being interviewed, so that they feel comfortable sharing their insights. To build rapport, researchers might want to ask some easier questions early on, questions that are not connected to the research itself (e.g., talk about the weather, pets, and current events). During the interview, the interviewerâs job is primarily to listen and guide the interaction by prompting the interviewee and asking follow-up questions. Donât insert yourself into the interview by telling too many of your own stories and sharing your own experiences! Treat the interviewee as the expert.
Interviews can take place in person, but remote interviews have been popular with researchers long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced most in-person interactions online. Remote interviews can be conducted over the phone, but video interviews (such as through Zoom or Skype) provide the additional advantage of showing nonverbal communication (such as facial expressions and gestures), which can be a source of important insights. Virtual interviews are also easily recorded, whether through the software being used or via voice recorders on the researcherâs phone.
Interviews provide data in the form of transcripts (recorded interviews are transcribed into text files), which are then analyzed by the researcher, who will look through the transcripts for patterns and themes. Because interviews tend to be at least 30 minutes long, they generate a lot of dataâa 30-minute interview creates about 10 pages of single-spaced text.
Other Ways of Asking Questions
Focus Groups
Focus groups are somewhat like group âinterviews,â with a researcher talking with five to ten participants at once. Itâs important to clarify, though, that focus groups are not interviews. Focus groups are more like a group discussion and are particularly valuable because of the interactions between the participants, rather than the insights gleaned from the individual answers from each participant. A small group setting can inspire participants to share personal stories and bounce off othersâ answers in ways that they would not have been comfortable doing in a one-on-one interview. Focus groups are useful for bringing to light ideas that might have been taken for granted, things that some individual participants might not have thought of before, but that emerge in a group setting. During a focus group, itâs important to pay attention to group dynamicsâthe amount of agreement or disagreement around a particular topic can highlight whatâs important to take into consideration during product development in UX.
Typically, a research study will include at least three focus groups. (Five to eight are ideal!) Because the format of a focus group is discussion-based, where respondents are encouraged to interact with each other, the researcher serves as a facilitator or moderator, rather than as an interviewer. Focus group participants can be recruited so that groups are homogenous (where participants all share demographic and other characteristics relevant to the study) or heterogenous (diverse participants make up each focus group). This decision depends on if the researcher wants to see how different people approach, discuss, and negotiate on the same topic or if the purpose of the research is to understand how a very specific group of people understands or feels about a topic.
A focus group moderator will use a focus group guide, a pre-prepared list of prompts, questions, and activities, to help facilitate participant interaction, during the discussion. As with interview guides, the first questions should be broad and easy, so that participants can feel at ease in the group and to encourage sharing. Focus group guides are particularly important when facilitators other than the primary researcher are used across different groups in the same study. This ensures that the questions asked and prompts used are the same in all the groups, to provide comparable data for analysis.
Focus group moderating can be a difficult task. You need to guide the conversation in a useful direction related to the Research Question or Problem Statement at hand, which can be hard to do with many voices at the table, each with their own stories and opinions. The facilitator also has to make sure that one particularly chatty participant doesnât dominate the conversation and that shy participants are encouraged to speak up. This is why a focus group moderator should be a skilled communicator and a credible presence to the focus group, so that they can (gently but firmly) assert their authority and keep the conversation on track. In UX, focus groups are used to assess user needs and feelings about a particular product. In academic Media and Communication Studies research, focus groups are really helpful for understanding group norms and dynamics around communication.
Qualitative Surveys
Surveys are another way of gathering attitudinal information from participants. Surveys consist of questions and scales (sets of questions that measure a particular attribute, such as a personality characteristic or digital literacy) that get at the who, what, and where of your users. In academic research, surveys are usually considered a quantitative method, in that they gather information that can be analyzed and presented numerically, such as demographics, numbers around media or technology use (time, frequency, etc.), and scales where respondents can rate an option on a scale from 1 to 5 (strongly disagree to strongly agree). Qualitative surveys, on the other hand, ask open-ended questions of participants (typically asking how or why), similar to interviews, but in this case, participants respond in written format, without an interviewer present. These types of questions demand long-form written answers, ideally paragraphs, that tell an anecdote or shed light on participantsâ feelings and attitudes around a particular topic.
Surveys are usually conducted online using programs such as SurveyMonkey or Google Forms, where a link is sent to all participants to answer the survey questions at their convenience. Surveys can also be sent out via mail (with a stamped return envelope for participants to send back the completed questionnaire) or conducted over the phone (typically using automatic systems). No doubt youâve experienced a survey beforeâfor instance, after calling customer service, it is common for a quick two- or three-question survey to be presented to callers, asking them to rate their satisfaction with the interaction, from 1 to 5.
Surveys are used in UX research to solicit feedback from users, either in the Empathize stage (to understand usersâ current needs) or in the Test stage, where researchers want to evaluate a website or app. Surveys are often built into the digital product itselfâthrough a âpopoverâ with a couple of questions that pops up while a person is interacting with the website or app. When conducting qualitative surveys, you should keep the questions minimalâone or two questions asking for written answers are the maximum that you should ask for users to answer, particularly if theyâre presented in a popover format (e.g., tell us what we could improve about this website âŚ). Too many questions can turn off the userâhow often have you started a survey and then stopped because the question set was dragging on and it seemed like too much effort?
The main limitation of using interviews, focus groups, and qualitative surveys for UX research is that, while they give you great insights into how and what people think (attitudinal data) as well as self-report data on their behaviors and habits, they do not give researchers insight into how people actually behave (behavioral data). Often, what people do and what people say they do are different things. When youâre concerned with how people use a digital product, observations can provide more accurate data of actual use.
Observations
Observations, as the name suggests, involve a researcher watching and listening to people. Observations have historically been conducted in person, but as more and more of our lives have gone digital, researchers do more online observations or digital ethnographies, observing people in digital spaces.
Observations are a very common technique in UX research because ultimately UX researchers are interested in understanding how people interact with somethingâhow they actually behaveâso that that experience can be improved. In UX, observational research takes place during the Empathize stage, when researchers want to discover how people currently use a particular product, but also during the Test stage, when researchers want to evaluate whether a product is easy and efficient to use. As youâll see later in this book, many different UX methods have an observation component.
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