Government stakeholders and data owners can leverage data user interviews to launch user research processes whenever time and resources allow. Interviews can be semi-structured and low-cost to conduct. In certain cases, for example when interviewing community members for their feedback as potential data users, it is appropriate to offer stipends for their participation.
At the start of user interviews, it’s best to provide stakeholders with information about how information from the interviews will be used and whether it will be shared with people outside of the user research process. This can help to build trust and ensure frank and helpful responses to interview questions. Also, it can be helpful to give stakeholders an overview of the research questions that data owners are seeking to address with their user research interviews (for example, “How do people seek information about healthy food sources in our city?”)
During interviews, it can be helpful to have two people available to support the interview process; one person to ask questions, and one person to take notes. Interviews can strictly follow an interview guide, or can include some unscripted follow-up questions that may add detail to the responses provided. Questions should generally pertain directly to the core research questions or themes of the user research process.
Following interviews, data owners and teams should collaborate to document and synthesise insights. Often, the best insights are contextualised and turned into potential solutions through collaborative conversations among stakeholders. Interview insights can be anonymised before synthesis workshops to ensure that data users are protected from undue backlash for their feedback.
Once insights are synthesised and tagged or categorised by major themes, teams can collaborate to ideate around potential solutions that address the major categories of challenges. These ideas for potential solutions can respond directly to data users’ requests, or can include more creative interpretations of what data users’ communicated as challenges in their responses. Often, data users’ who have challenges with data request certain solutions because these options are the only ones they are aware of, but stakeholders involved in ideation may have insight into other potential solutions that can more aptly address data users’ concerns.