Thank you for having made clarifications on interview strategies. You gave a ‘real thing’ from your experience.

Thank you also for commenting on my previous comment regarding personas. I was too caught up in a whirlwind of activities to say a few kind words in return.

You highlighted a number of relevant issues. My comments are based on four points. Understand that I am only echoing your views with intention to see how you react.

1. Who should be interviewed first?

The top managers provide strategic directions of their site. The low-level staff bring relevant tactical issues. Shall we begin interview with strategic or tactical issues?

My inclination is begin with tactical issues, reflect on them, and then meet the strategists last. This is because strategists have the last word on the project.

2. Resistance to changes

From your articles, ‘acceptance’ of a project is a win-win situation. To win, we have to be “agents of change”. To minimise rejections, I consider three strategies:

(i) a passive solution consists in listening to what they want, and make sure to give it to them while presenting the Strategy Document (SD),
(ii) a middle-ground solution is to listen to what they want, and argue your case in the SD, and
(iii) an aggressive solution is to listen and argue the case during the interview.

I will go for a middle-ground solution. Again, it depends on many other factors such as how functional or dysfunctional is the organisation, resistance to changes, etc. In the case of a dysfunctional organisation, a resistance to changes is a potential factor in the rejection of the proposal. If such a thing ever happens, are we to bow to the stakeholders or fight back?

3. Recording an interview

Unless you are lucky to have an assistant, it may be tricky to speak and take down notes. Wouldn’t a tape recorder be a practical solution? Again, I am apprehensive regarding any reliance on such a method. I assume peoples generally resent it.

5. Strategy Document

Is a Strategy Document a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)?

If really a MoU must be signed off by the two parties, I imagine the difficulties involved. Probably, a contact person has to sign it off. I am trying to understand procedures or protocol for interviews.

Thanks again for the points in your articles.

Boke Landu Nkoy

Regarding your comment on prioritizing tactical versus strategic stakeholders. I think it is most important to compare the stakeholders made available to you against the organizational goal or usability issue. If it is a tactical issue you are attempting to address, then you may wish to prioritize your order against stakeholders who are tasked with shorter term work–and vice-versa. This doesn’t mean you should necessarily limit one over the other, only use this factor as one of many points for your own priority and focus.

With regard to stakeholder resistance to change, I think Boutelle’s article covers that topic quite well. If organizational resistance is so great that it is unrealistic to attempt, then consider picking another problem. All of these kinds of decisions should be made collaboratively with your immediate client.

Recording: As with most research, you have to weigh whether recording devices would somehow compromise or influence the data from which you’re basing key decisions. In user research, respondents are typically made aware that they are being recorded and assured that comments will be anonymously attributed in a findings report. Sometimes you have to do that with stakeholders, as I’ve mentioned. More often than not, however, I find that taking notes on my laptop suffices. I often like to bring a colleague to help type as stakeholders make their comments.

I supposed a strategy document could be a signable memorandum as you’ve described. However, in my experience it is typcially a much broader report of themes and issues that bubble up from the findings. Stakeholders’ comments make up only a portion (albeit an important one) of that document. By contrast, an MOU is really more of a short design scope document for a fully defined architecture–almost like part of a service agreement. A good strategy would predate such a defined scope, though a strategy is something you would point to as a preliminary starting point that your client should buy into before moving forward.