Co-Designer Interviews

What is a co-designer interview?

A co-designer interview is more than just gathering information—it's an opportunity to gain insight into your co-designer's experiences, goals, and challenges as they relate to the activity you’re designing for. This interview isn’t simply a data-gathering exercise; it’s a collaborative conversation where the co-designer actively shares knowledge, ideas, and feedback that will shape the design process. Here, the co-designer is an expert on their experiences, and your role is to listen deeply, ask thoughtful questions, and guide the discussion in a way that brings out rich, actionable insights. 

In some cases, your co-designer may not be able to express what themselves very well - maybe they are too young or are non-verbal, for example - remember in those cases that you are not just co-designing with the eventual user of your product, but also with parents, caretakers, or other people in that person's life, and consider conducting the interview with them as well.

Note: We recognize that some teams have already moved ahead with the project without specifically planning an interview or formally writing down needs and requirements from that interview. Even if you have already moved ahead, please do this assignment anyway. The goal is for you to learn this process. Also, while you are doing these assignments keep an open mind about changes to anything you may have already done with your project as a result of this assignment.

How do you plan an interview?

When planning a co-designer interview, it’s essential to focus on areas that reveal not just how an activity is currently done, but why it matters to the co-designer and what barriers they encounter. Here are some areas to consider when developing your interview protocol:

• What is the activity they want to do? Understand the core activity, including what steps they already take and why this activity is meaningful to them. You may want to consider more than one activity, but try to restrict your interview to no more than three activities.

• What each stage of trying to do the activity is like: Explore the process they go through, breaking it down step-by-step to understand both physical and emotional experiences.

• What factors make it unpleasant or impossible: Identify specific pain points, challenges, or frustrations that hinder their independence or comfort in doing the activity.

• Why doing the activity more independently matters to them: Ask about the deeper motivations behind their goals, which can help guide design priorities.

Interviewing Techniques and Structure

Consider the structure of your interview. While the specifics will vary from case to case, a common way to structure an interview might look like the following:

1. Establishing Rapport: Create a comfortable environment that allows for a natural, open exchange. This might involve small talk, a welcoming demeanor, and avoiding topics that could create discomfort. Building rapport may vary based on cultural norms, so it’s helpful to prepare phrases or questions that put co-designers at ease.

2. Open Conversation: Seek out stories of your interviewee's life, work, goals, and thoughts, so you can understand who they are and how disability affects them in these contexts. While the eventual design goal around this interview is to make something to help with a disability-related challenge, you should learn enough about your co-designer to have a rich description of him or her as a person before considering the disability. If all you learn is that "Sally is a blind six-year-old," your interview has probably failed.

Also, while you don’t need to be an expert, having some understanding of the activity or challenge will allow you to ask meaningful questions and show respect for the co-designer's expertise. In most cases, your team already has some background information about the person before you approach this interview, so doing a bit of research and thinking can help you generate guiding questions in this part.

3. Clean up: Ask specific questions that were not previously addressed, or that you had written down beforehand (if they still apply). You might go back and forth more than once between open conversation and clean up, depending on the topics you are covering.

4. Closing: Ask your co-designer and your team members if there is anything else they would like to cover. This can include any particular considerations your co-designer wants you to pay attention to for approaching any of the challenges you discussed, or any priorities they have about what they would like you to try to address.

Also, take this opportunity to thank your co-designer, and let them know how you plan to follow up!

What Not to Do

To maintain a productive, respectful interview environment, avoid the following pitfalls:

• Asking closed questions that limit responses, unless they are specific follow-ups to get a particular detail.

• Ignoring or failing to follow up on topics your co-designer brings up.

• Failing to establish rapport, which may make the conversation feel transactional.

• Becoming overly focused on note-taking or missing out on non-verbal cues, such as body language and facial expressions.

In the context of the Challenge, also consider how your interviewee might feel with your team. If, for example, you have a team of five students and a coach, and you all show up at your co-designer's living room and nobody else is around, it may be a somewhat intimidating experience for some people to have a six-on-one situation. Think about whether that might happen and how you might alleviate concerns like that.

Logistics of Interviewing

Face-to-Face Interaction: Conducting interviews face-to-face allows you to observe body language, interpret silences, and build a stronger connection. This can be invaluable for understanding nuances that might not come across in words alone. Try to conduct the interview in person if possible.

Recording the Interview: Recording allows you to capture the full conversation for later analysis without needing to write everything down during the interview. Always ask permission to record, as some co-designers may feel uncomfortable with it. If recording isn’t possible, work with your team so that one person can focus on note-taking while others engages with the co-designer.

Respecting Co-Designer Preferences: If your co-designer prefers not to be recorded, try to understand why and respect their choice. This sensitivity builds trust and helps ensure that they feel in control of the interview.

Interview Protocols

An interview protocol is your set of notes and procedures that you develop before the interview to prepare for the activity. Use it as a guide during your interview, but be flexible about how you use it if the interview goes in an unexpected but helpful direction. Alternatively, if you are getting off track, you can use it to steer the conversation back to the focus of the interview.

Assignment: Interview Protocol

As a team, please write up an protocol for interviewing your co-designer. Items you will want to consider include, but are not limited to:

Interview Background:

• Summarize what you already know about your co-designer

• If you have conducted some background research into specific challenges or activities that are relevant to your co-designer, include notes about those items

Interview Plan:

• What is your plan for each of the phases of the interview?

• Are there specific points you want to focus on or make sure you get covered?

• Are there reminders for yourself during any of the phases?

Logistics:

• How will you conduct your interview?

• Who needs to be there?

• Where and when will it be done?

• Will you need recording equipment?

If there are other things that you want to note about your protocol, feel free to include them.

Needs and Requirements

Once you have found a co-designer and had a chance to conduct an interview, let's think back to the Design Process section:

What are some of the sub-problems that your product must solve? Draw a functional diagram of the product, and tell us what the inputs and outputs of the functional diagram are. As a reminder, inputs and outputs are typically energy, material, control, or signals associated with your product.

Assignment: Needs and Requirements

Write down a set of user needs statements that you have extracted from the interview. They may be related to the same activity or disability-related challenge, or they may not be. You might try grouping the user needs if you find clusters that are related. For each user need, write one or more product requirements that are associated with that need. Remember that your eventual project does not need to address every challenge expressed during the interview. This step is just to get you ready for product brainstorming.