This past Tuesday we hosted the first Hybrid Factory at Mozilla. The Hybrid Factory, created by Diane Loviglio (User Experience Researcher at Mozilla) and Krista Sanders (Interaction Designer at AOL) is a
series of free workshops designed to promote the cross-pollination of UX’ers, Engineers, and Product/Business Strategists.
Carla Borsoi and Diane Loviglio presented tips and tricks for a successful interview such as getting the context first, then asking about specifics; ask open ended questions; ask about the past, not the future; use the interviewee’s language and probe, probe, probe. Then we broke into pairs and practiced interviewing each other with pre-selected topics such as their upcoming vacation, their view on global warming, why they live where they do, their last big purchase and their movie watching behavior.
When we circled back after the 5-minute interviews, attendees told us that one of the hardest things for interviewers was letting there be silence as the interviewee is thinking before responding. Another challenge that interviewers shared was not knowing what to do after they asked a leading question.
Each month, we’ll feature a different topic from User Research to UX Storytelling to Engineering, and each month we’ll have different speakers and/or workshop facilitators. Add yourself to our GoogleGroup if you want to get invited to the next event, which will be hosted at AOL.