Beatrice Santiccioli: Specializing in Color

A visual designer discusses why Swatch, watercolors and cooking can inspire the design of color. Louise Sandhaus draws out how Beatrice Santiccioli came to be the Queen of Color.

Sandhaus, Louise. AIGA (2005). Articles>Graphic Design>Interviewing

Before the Interview

People often turn down the chance to be interviewed because they're nervous, or afraid they'll say the wrong thing. Instead, think of the interview as a golden opportunity for you to convey your message. If perceptions about you, your school, or youth in general have been wrong in the past, this is your chance to set the record straight.

Media-Awareness.ca. Articles>Interviewing>Video

Conducting Successful Interviews With Project Stakeholders

A simple, semi-structured, one-on-one interview can provide a very rich source of insights. Interviews work very well for gaining insights from both internal and external stakeholders, as well as from actual users of a system under consideration. Though, in this column, I'll focus on stakeholder interviews rather than user interviews.

Baty, Steve. UXmatters (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Interviewing

Conducting Successful SME Interviews  

Interviewing subject matter experts (SMEs) is one of the most common and useful methods for obtaining the information needed to create quality documents. Successful SME interviews require careful research and preparation in advance. During the interview, good listening skills, critical analysis, and the ability to maintain control of the range and depth of the interview with appropriate tact are crucial to successful outcomes. After the interview, give prompt attention to notes and any required follow-through. When working with hostile SMEs or those with poor communication skills, emphasize the strengths of the relationship and develop strategies to work around any weaknesses.

Lambe, Jennifer L. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Interviewing>Writing>SMEs

Culture and Usability Evaluation: The Effects of Culture in Structured Interviews  

A major impediment in global user interface development is that there is inadequate empirical evidence for the effects of culture in the usability engineering methods used for developing these global user interfaces. This paper presents a controlled study investigating the effects of culture on the effectiveness of structured interviews in international usability evaluation. The experiment consisted of a usability evaluation of a website with two independent groups of Indian participants. Each group had a different interviewer; one belonging to the Indian culture and the other to the Anglo-American culture. The results show that participants found more usability problems and made more suggestions to an interviewer who was a member of the same (Indian) culture than to the foreign (Anglo-American) interviewer. The results of the study empirically establish that culture significantly affects the efficacy of structured interviews during international user testing. The implications of this work for usability engineering are discussed.

Vatrapu, Ravi and Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones. Journal of Usability Studies (2006). Articles>Usability>Interviewing>Cultural Theory

Documentation Through the Discovery Process  

The technical writers at a software company learn about the software by gathering information and running the software themselves.

Kloss, Marilyn B. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Documentation>Interviewing

During the Interview

Remember that when you speak to a reporter, you're potentially speaking to an audience of hundreds or thousands of people. Try not to appear negative or confrontational. A hostile attitude will make it difficult for viewers to take your point seriously.

Media-Awareness.ca. Articles>Interviewing>Video

Effective Interviewing: Get the Story  

In this article, Geoffrey Hart offers the following tips on how to interview a subject matter expert (SME) for reliable, comprehensive, timely information:

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2000). Articles>Interviewing>Collaboration

Employee Conferences That Matter

A troupe of disco dancers in gold bodysuits was about to hit the stage. Several of our corporate leaders—dressed as famous pop stars from the 1970s—milled around nervously in the wings. And I remember thinking, “What the heck have we got ourselves into?” I was part of the employee communication team for a government-owned financial institution: Farm Credit Canada (FCC). We were about to open our 2005 corporate office conference before a crowd of 500 people, many of them accountants. A campy musical opening could be seen as a risky choice. But here's what brought me peace of mind: I knew that behind the glitz, we had built our conference on a solid foundation of business thinking.

Mayne, Peter. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Interviewing

Extracting Pearls from Other People's Brains: The Art of Interviewing

Perhaps one of the bigger challenges faced by white paper writers is coming up with good content. The default course of action is to do a Google search. While this approach can yield valuable information, the best pearls reside inside someone else's head.

Stelzner, Michael A. WhitePaperSource (2006). Articles>Interviewing>Research>White Papers

Face to Face With Your Users: Running a Nondirected Interview

An interview is a funny situation. It's like a friendly conversation between strangers, but unlike the kind you may have on the bus. When chatting on the bus, people try very hard to agree with each other and to quickly communicate interesting information. Each person wants to be liked and adjusts the way they speak and what they say so as not to offend. This type of exchange is perfectly fine for maintaining civil society -- deeper exchanges can always happen as an acquaintance deepens -- but shallow banter isn't appropriate for an interview. You need to find out what someone is experiencing, what they're thinking, or what their real opinions are.

Kuniavsky, Mike. Adaptive Path (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Interviewing>Usability

Focus Groups or Individual Interviews? A Comparison of Text Evaluation Approaches    

By providing an empirical comparison of two evaluation approaches, this article aims to make it easier to choose between focus groups and individual interviews as a way of evaluating documents, and thereby to contribute to a methodology of text evaluation. The article first presents the relevant literature and then moves on to present the results of the authors' experiment. The authors find that focus groups tended to identify acceptance problems, while individual interview participants focused on comprehension.

de Jong, Menno D.T. and Peter Jan Schellens. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Interviewing>Methods

Group Interviews as Source for Writing Proposals

Group interviews can be an effective means for collecting information for competitive proposals. Many knowledgeable people who are phobic about writing will talk freely during a group interview. In addition, people who consider themselves too busy to write a section of a proposal may be amenable to committing 2 - 3 hours to a technical or project management interview.

Kendrick, Jim. Competitive Communication Methods (1998). Articles>Interviewing>Proposals

Guide Lines to Become Better than the Rest

The acronym GD stands for Group Discussion and has now become as interview in professional and academic circles. The basic aim of the Group Discussion is to evaluate the effectiveness of the candidate in a group activity. This effectiveness is judged through the leadership qualities and the communication skills displayed.

Kerala Education. Articles>Usability>Interviewing>Focus Groups

How to Control Interviews Even When Outranked

Expect anyone you're interviewing to try to control the interview, says writer/trainer Thomas Hunter. Anticipate special difficulties if that person outranks you. You must make on-the-spot judgments during every interview, but Hunter suggests steps to take beforehand, alternative approaches to consider during interviews and techniques to use after unsatisfactory ones.

Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Writing>Interviewing

How to Interview Subject Matter Experts  

While technical writers may interview subject matter experts on a daily basis to gather information for a project, very few training courses address how to conduct these interviews. Singer's article provides suggestions.

Singer, Warren. Intercom (2007). Articles>Interviewing>SMEs

Information Gathering for Policies and Procedures  

Information gathering can be one of the most timeconsuming and potentially frustrating experiences when writing policies and procedures. Policy and procedure writers sometimes start from scratch and must investigate and research policies and procedures before the first word is ever written. Although there are many obstacles to obtaining accurate and timely information, there are also many avenues the policy and procedure writer can take to gather, utilize, and maintain information.

Dodwell, Christine. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Interviewing>Documentation>Policies and Procedures

Interview Any User About Any Subject

To invite users to provide knowledge that informs your readers, you can try different approaches. In a small company, meeting with users is more informal: you can stop by and casually ask a few questions, rather than hold a more extended interview. When you’re speaking with an expert, tailor your conversation to that person. To establish rapport with a reluctant or skeptical source, try asking a specific question about a certain computer function. Or ask a general question on a broad function. Once the expert is talking, then you can pose more specific questions.

Strickland, Charlene J. TC-FORUM (1997). Articles>Interviewing

Interview with Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville

An O'Reilly interview with Peter Morville and Lou Rosenfeld about their book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, their work, and the field of information architecture.

Hill, Scott. O'Reilly and Associates (2000). Articles>Information Design>Interviewing

Interviewing Techniques: An Art You Need to Practice

Although some communicators have a background in journalism, interviewing may not be the first thing that pops into your mind when you think of business communication. Of course, many of us interview managers and employees for our company's newsletter articles, annual reports, promotional materials, white papers, advertorials, speeches and more. But the need for good interview techniques goes a lot further even than that.

Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Interviewing>Business Communication

Interviewing Tips for Podcasters

Some advice from one podcaster to others on how to do interviews.

DMN Communications (2008). Articles>Interviewing>Audio>Podcasting

Interviewing: How a Willie Nelson Concert Taught Me How to Listen

The best interviewing is conversational and nothing else. It's not over complimentary, gushing or just about impressing your interviewee with your knowledge.

Hartsock, Nettie. WhitePaperSource (2006). Articles>Interviewing

Interviewing: We Ask Some Tough Questions and Present Some Answers

Interviewing brings up some thorny issues. In this edition of "Working Words," we want to follow up on the basics covered in our last column and give you some opinions that may be helpful. To supplement our own experience, we've brought in some heavy guns—several seasoned business writers and a newspaper reporter, all of whom handle tough subjects.

Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Writing>Interviewing

Killer Interviewing Tactics: Get The Most from Your Guests

Covers the basics of good interviewing technique: making sure the show is not about you but about your guest; listening to the answers you get; sticking to a script; and, above all, preparation, preparation, preparation.

Murphy, Gayl. Podcast Academy (2006). Articles>Interviewing>Audio>Podcasting