UB: Week 12, Unlearning My Cocktail Conversation
“Thank you. You helped to realize something about myself that I didn’t know until now.”
“No, no, thank you!”
One of the best conversations I had during the interview stage of this project was with someone who was talking about the people who made an impact on that person’s choice of career. It was fantastic, and according to Indi, exactly the type of conversation we hope to have with people.
The last few weeks, a big push to complete our calls-over 47 hour(ish)-long conversations, in total. The majority of them were fantastic, and while we’ve got a few left to go, we’ve started the combing process. What’s combing? It’s basically sifting through each of the conversations. We’re searching for nuggetscompact phrases that use people’s specific wordsthat identify behaviors, feelings, philosophies, intents, and all of the motivations that drive them. Check out Indi’s blog about this-and just to be clear, Rebecca anchored to the panning-for-gold analogy, while I went for the more pedestrian Mickey D’s. reference.
But combing is a post for another time. Today, I wanted simply to share my personal lessons learned about interviewing for mental models.
This process is seriously different than talking with stakeholders. In stakeholder meetings, you’re doing triple duty. Surely, a great deal of those meetings is devoted to finding out what stakeholders know about the audiences that they’re trying to serve. But part of those meetings is also spent building the client relationships-client and consultant need to get to know each other and to trust in each other’s expertise and experience. And part of those meetings is devoted to planning-talking about the entire process, next steps, etc. Focus groups with target audiences get us closer to source information.
These conversations, closer still. We’ve been talking directly with individuals who represent the audience segments that we’ve identified in our mental model (and as quick reminder, we’ve got six: matchseekers, pathfinders, solution seekers, pulsetakers, prideful belongers, and active supporters). Indi likens these conversations to ones that you might have over cocktails or dinner, and she offers the following rules (which you can read more about in Mental Models):
1. Behaviors and philosophies, not product preferences
2. Open questions only
3. No words of your own
4. Follow the conversation
5. Not about tools
6. Immediate experience
Only, I realized that I needed to unlearn my cocktail conversation. So let me offer my own few add-ons:
1. Don’t worry about finding common ground. You know what that’s like. You meet a new person at party and you begin to talk and the first thing you want to do is find something that you have in common—a topic you can banter about and discuss. Something that interests you, and on which you have opinions and thoughts that you’d like to share. Except that this conversation is solely about the person you’re talking to. Which to an introvert like me is a bit of a blessed relief.
2. Don’t worry about being interesting. Or sounding smart. You know what that’s like as well—oh, the pressure to be witty and engaging and loved by all! Except that, again, it’s about the person you’re talking to. Their impressions of you only matter inasmuch as they can sense that you’re truly listening, paying attention, and grateful for the time and disclosure that they’re willing to give you.
3. Don’t avoid the childish question. “Why?” “Why?” “Tell me a story about …” As long as the person you’re talking with is forthcoming, the simplest questions get the most interesting and fertile answers.
We’ve got 47-some conversations to parse—an exercise that will probably yield almost 3,000 nuggets, all in our target audience members’ own words. Then, grouping. User-centered development, anyone?
What struck me the most after working through reviewing hours (upon hours) of audio, was that as a project team, we were really listening to our audience in a different way than we had ever done before. We weren’t trying to draw out of them what we needed to know, instead, we were allowing the waves of their thoughts, needs and desires to flow over us, inspire us, direct us. One seasoned editor told me that this process enriched her approach to interviews.
This approach that we are collaborating on is asking the mStonerBuffalo team to step out of our collective comfort zones and leap into the unknown. And we are flying.
Posted on July 16, 2009 by Rebecca Bernstein