User Interface Design – Collaging: Getting Answers to the Questions You Don’t Know to Ask interview with Kyle Soucy
When conducting user research, we all know asking the right questions is just as important as how you ask them, but how do you even know what questions to ask? What if the discussion topic is extremely personal and private? How do you get a complete stranger to open up to you? There is a better way to conduct an in-depth interview and it doesn’t involve using a clipboard. Just imagine what you could discover if the participant’s answers weren’t limited to a predetermined set of questions.
In this five minute interview with Kyle Soucy, founding principal of Usable Interface, Kyle will explain the history of collaging and other projective techniques, what you can learn from it, how to conduct it, and how to analyze the findings.
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Collaging is a needs-elicitation technique where users randomly select images to represent how they feel about a specific topic. Users then explain the reason they chose each image to the moderator. The collage becomes an instrument for participants to express the needs that they might not otherwise have been able to articulate. This information allows us to better understand the user’s world and how to design for it.
Kyle Soucy is the founding principal of Usable Interface ((www.usableinterface.com), an independent consulting company specializing in product usability and user-centered design. Her clients have ranged in industries from pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer to publishing powerhouses like McGraw-Hill. She has created intuitive interfaces for a variety of different products, everything from web sites to touch screen devices.