interviews

Tutorial: The Ethnographic Arts of Interviewing

Tutorial: The Ethnographic Arts of Interviewing
Learn what makes ethnographic interviews distinct and distinctly valuable, how to develop interview protocols that align with a research brief, and specific skills for engaging with research participants. Instructor: MICHAEL G. POWELL Overview This video has been edited to protect the privacy of participants in the live tutorial. Interviews are research bread and butter. But a method often referred to as “common” and “easy” actually comprises a vast terrain of approaches, techniques, theory and analytical frameworks—not to mention the interpersonal and sensory arts at the heart of interviewing. This tutorial provides a grounding in ethnographic interviewing, which generates unique value by prompting and actually participating in the articulation of our participants’ worldviews and discourse. It covers framing questions, asking questions well, actively listening, providing feedback and prompts for exploration. You will learn: How to think about research project design in ways that value ethnographic...

Who Gets to Define Success?: Listening to Stories of How People Value Firefox to Redefine Metrics and Revive a Decommissioned Product

GEMMA PETRIE Mozilla Firefox JENNIFER DAVIDSON Mozilla Firefox Challenging measures of scale is possible through listening to stories of how people value a product, and envisioning ways to measure success beyond typical metrics like Monthly Active Use (MAU) or Daily Active Use (DAU). Understanding what people value is somewhat complex for a product like Firefox because people might use Firefox every day without thinking much about it. In this case study, we detail how we used Futures Thinking and participatory design methods to elicit stories of how people value Firefox. This case study demonstrates that a relatively small number of meaningful ethnographic insights can be powerful enough to influence business strategy. By creating the space for listening to stories and encouraging stakeholder involvement, we were able to make the case to save one of our mobile browsers, Firefox Focus, despite its lack of scale. Keywords: Diary Study, Firefox, Futures Thinking, Interviews, Mozilla, Participatory Design, Remote Research,...