Chapter 1: Why interviewing?

• Understand people in order to create solutions for them
• The differences between interviewing and other methods
• Use techniques to get the best information
• Look for the "reframe"
• Creates a shared experience between designer/researcher/client.

Chapter 2: A Framework for Interviewing

• Check your worldview at the door
• Embrace how other people see the world
• It's your job to build rapport
• Listening is the rapport engine (and it's hard)

Chapter 3: Preparing For The Interview

• Clarify the research objectives with stakeholders
• Prepare a field guide

Chapter 4: What Else We Can Do In Interviews Besides "Asking Questions"

• Ask someone to perform a task
• Participate in an activity
• Demonstrate how someone normally goes through a process
• Role-playing exercise
• Bring stimuli to the interview
• Ask someone to try a product
• Ask someone to react to a storyboard

Chapter 5: The Flow Of The Interview

• Clarifying Roles for the Field Team
• Crossing the Threshold
• Restating Objectives
• Kickoff Question
• Accepting Awkwardness
• The Tipping Point
• The Grand Tour
• Reflection and Projection
• The Wrap-Up Effect

Chapter 6: How to Ask Questions

• How to use the field guide
• Use pauses
• Refer back to previous statements
• The importance of the follow-up question
• A taxonomy of question types
• Why we need a huge palette of questions

Chapter 7: Tactics for Documentation

• Methods of documentation
• Visual documentation
• Consider pros and cons of a range of solutions

Chapter 8: Troubleshooting Common Interview Problems

• What do you do when your participant won't open up to you?
• What do you do when your participant won't stop talking?
• What do you do when your client won't stop talking?
• How do you plan for interviewing professionals versus consumers?
• How do you handle a participant who provides obviously false information?

Chapter 9: Techniques To Improve Your Interviewing

• Review and critique transcripts and videos of previous interviews
• Look at brief everyday encounters
• Collect and share "war stories"

Chapter 10: What Happens Next: Analyzing and Synthesizing and Design

• The "business question" - the design or other need that has led to the interviewing process
• The "research question" - the specific objective that the research approach is going to address
• Overview of synthesis, analysis and deliverables
• Organizational impacts of engaging in contextual research