The Illinois Institute of Technology's Gabe Biller and Kristy Scovel created an introductory video on how to conduct an ethnographic interview. It features Dori Tunstall who teaches Design Ethnography at the University of Illinios Chicago and Colleen Murray of Jump Associates along with a host of IIT folks. We will watch this great video in class. I also want you to watch it a second time by Tue Oct 16th. I found this 33 minute video on the blog http://eskar.dk/andreas/blog/?p=313
You can also learn more about "extreme user research" mentioned in the video.
Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer from Gabe & Kristy on Vimeo.
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22 comments:
Posted by Gabrijela Peic
I am glad, I saw this post because I expected interviewing to be much easier. By doing my way, I would probably have a high risk of bringing untrue or wrong answers. I would suggest anyone watching this post to take notes because there are some gooood advices you can use for the ANT project.
Watching the guy (in the begging of the post) trying to interview people seemed much harder than I though. It is kind of embarrassing standing there while people are just passing by you, not interested at all in what you have to say. However, this is NYC and people are ALWAYS so BUSY. Sometimes, I stop and get interviewed by somebody, but there were few times when the interviewers where kind of disrespectful. There was one time when I was late on my, lets call it a beauty appointment. I was walking up and down the block because I could not find the place. There was a guy trying to interview people about dogs. He asked me two times, but I did not have time, and the third time he called me a dog hater. What?!? How he dares to call me a dog hater? Well, he is not interviewing me for sure....
After looking at that video I can say that it is not easy to do what they did. It is fun but in terms of trying to get what you want out of the interview is all about paying attention. I think that to have any success with this project you need to be a people person. You need to like to talk to people. You must create a conversation in order to get at what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s almost like talking to someone without your understanding that you have to do it because it is an assignment. I learned a lot watching that video. I learned that the only way to be a success on the assignment, you have to think of it as something optional to do even though it will be mandatory to do. You have to think outside the box to what you are actually trying to accomplish. Doing something like that also requires patience. Most people find it annoying when they are just walking down the street and they happened to be stopped by a random person asking random questions. The reason for that is because you can’t imagine yourself doing something like that. Many people do not want to be bothered with nonsense. I live in the Bronx, so I see this kind of thing everyday. I am one of those people that try to ignore those stop on the street and ask a question kind of people. You can’t understand it until you put yourself in their shoes. I think that it is one of the main aspects of this project. I am going to find it interesting doing this project. I will have to remember that the only way to have any kind of success with the observation is to make it interesting and above all, have fun doing it.
This is Jou-Man Huang
I am the kind of person who never knows how to hold a conversation, let alone an engaging interview... I find this interview very helpful in giving me some ideas as where to start. Like Gabi said, without watching this video I would have made a lot the mistakes in interviewing. Are there any videos that teaches you how to come up with good questions for an interview? I'd like to learn more about how to get people/strangers to open up.
Watching this video made me realize that interviewing is not as easy as it may seem. Watching how many minutes went by without the guy in the video getting a response from anyone in the streets helps me understand that a person has to have guts to be able to go out there and just go up to people and ask them questions. Think about how everyone is so into their own world that they never have time to stop and even say "no thanks" to the person that comes up to them to ask questions or sell a product. I think that people should step outside the box and just try something new like being interviewed by a stranger in the streets. The reason as to why people avoid it is because like I said before people are always busy and rushing to some place especially when you live in New York and people most of the time have negative thoughts and tend not to trust anyone especially if they're strangers. Being charismatic can help a person when they are interviewing others because if the interviewer's personality is unkind, rude, and obnoxious than people won't even want to be stopped by interviewers like that in the street. From my perspective, I think interviewing can be lots of fun and you can learn a lot from it as long as you set your mind to it.
Interviewing is not an easy task. Honestly, we all once did not pay attention to somebody who stops us in the street. Now, I understand how they can get frustrated when we act like that. In the video, professor Tunstall provide many tips to establish a good ethnography. Patience and investment in what you are doing would allow you to success. I learned that the step of participant observation requires a reel motivation and leave outside pre-judgments. Professors as well students should not be over emotional, so they will not influence the result of their study. I think this interview is very useful in doing our project which I know would be very interesting.
After I watching this video, I found that interviewing is more difficult than I thought. We have to prepare well and fully for an interview. Like the guy in a red shirt said: we have to prepare the camera or video recorder, voice recorder, pens and paper. Sometimes we also need to prepare a form to let people to fill in. and it’s hard to let people to do what you want. You can not control people. We have to find a way out to let them to be comfortable for our interview first and show them our respect to them, so that we could get most of the good information we want.
And I also found that ethnographic is really very important tools to understand the other people. As Dori Tunstall said, from ethnographic, we can understand people better and their human condition; how the different style make up different people’s life; what are the meaning of things and how worth are they. Through ethnographic we also could analyze customers’ thinking and feeling about the goods, so that we could satisfy them better.
And I agree with Gabi, New York City people are too busy to stop by and listen to the interviewer. At the beginning of the video, it’s hard for the guy on getting people to talk. Most people may feel embarrassing because of the recording. in another hand, it’s hard to interest a stranger to talk with you. But once he found somebody to talk, most of conversations are funny and interesting. After watching this video, I have a general idea on doing out project.
This Post was really helpful while started to think about our ethnography reports. Ill admit I was kind of getting bored by the end of the video but it had a lot of key points to use in conducting an interview or to get someone’s attention. I know it is hard to get the attention of people, especially when asking them about their jeans, people just want to get out and they just want to be on their way. For me, I have a different perspective on it, I think that if you’re nice, well groomed, and polite, it won't be hard for you to get people stop. But that’s from my perspective. I am actually really anxious about this mini-ethnography report and I want to really get started on it but first I want to get some feedback on what I should do my report on, and I think we should discuss topics that we could do in class just to get a better feel about this project :)
4:10
I never think that interviewing people is hard work before watching this video. However, It was hard to interviewing people especially on the street. Like another student said, I never pay attention to somebody who makes me stop on the street and I never know they are doing really hard work. Now, I realized that and very sorry for them.
This video was really helped me to understand ethnography and participate observation. It also helped me to get some ideas of our project. I was intereting and I feel better to do project.
Thanks to those who have replied so far. I noticed that many of you are reacting to the street interviewing. Most, if not all of you, won't be conducting impromptu or street interviews. You will select and contact a KEY CULTURAL CONSULTANT. Someone who is an expert on/in the cultural institution or event you intend to study. Will send you all a sample mini-ethnography and we will discuss it this week.
Eileen Burton
Section XY24C
Before watching this video I was very apprehensive about doing the mini-ethnograpgy assignment. I am a very shy person and the thought of interviewing people for the project scares me. I was thinking, who am I going to interview? what questions am I going to ask them? will I remember what they will say? Am I going to get the right information I need to incorporate in the assignment? As I was reading the exemplar ethnography and watching the the video on interviewing, it really helped me calm down a bit. Even though interviewing is not easy it showed me some useful tips to help begin my interview. Also by reading the exemplar ethnography it gave me an idea of what cultural aspect I wanted to study and who as a cultural consultant I want to interview.
I would like to respond to the street interview done by Alex because I have had a similar experience recently. My task was to sell ribbons to fund raise for breast cancer. By trying to sell ribbons, I had to target strangers who I thought would participate. Asking strangers to participate in our fund raiser was not easy. I had to briefly introduce myself and why I would like to fund raise. People in NYC are often very busy and always in a rush. By interviewing or interacting with another, you have to keep them interested. When others answer, you also have to stay focused and not interrupt them by saying phrases like "uh huh, okay, i see." As an ethnographer, the interviewer must put him/herself into a position where they do not assume solutions. An ethnographer tells the story from the interviewees position indicating that they can understand.
I always thought an interview was just having your questions written downn on a piece of paper and writing down the interviewee's answers. I never though about how much really goes into an interview or what a successful interview even was. I'm really glad i saw this video and I know its going to be helpful not only in this project, but in general.
I would've never thought about how body motion and certain words, like saying something's interesting, could have such an impact on the interview. I also would've never thought about how atmosphere affects the interviewee before the interview even starts.
I'm the kind of person who's relatively shy and introvert by myself, but very outgoing and when I'm with friends so I can definitely see how having someone else there will help the interviewee be themself.
Wow, interviewing looks really hard. Its great to have a formal one on one/ face to face interview. Its so much easier to just do a interview like an anchor or reporter.
Its so hard just to get an interview with some one in the streets. I guess its that its true that people are really scared or do have trepidation to speak with some one out of nowhere.
However,I find this type of interviewing to be more interesting. Also, i found this video really funny because the first thing the guy says to these people is that "I'm not selling anything". That's something and most commonly heard in NYC, that's why it was so funny. This ethnography was really interesting because it showed many different barriers that we face.
Interviewing is going to be hard for me because I'm a Quite, silent type guy. So, interviewing is going to be a new challenge for me.
This was a great video to watch before our mini ethnography project. In the beginning it reminded me of NYC city were some random people on the street trying ask you to take a survey or some other kind of marketing. I never thought that it could be anthropologist trying to find out some information from the general public. The most helpful part of the video was when they describe how to have a successful interview and what to look for. The tips they gave will probably be most helpful for with strangers because your friends or people you know wouldn’t feel uncomfortable by your presence. Difference between all tree styles of interviews and explanation why participant observations is really important were keys parts of the video also because it showed why it important. Seeing this interview will indefinably help me get rid of some flaws from my own mini anthropology interviews.
This video reinforced many of the things I already knew about interviews, and provided some great jump-off points for interviews.
The video showed me the progressions interviewers go through. The college student who tries to interview people on a busy New York street, and has a somewhat hard time reaching out to the busy city crowd. The man who uses himself to show us "what not to do" by analyzing his own interview clips and pausing and "patronizing" himself. The clips of the very well-worded woman who narrates most of the video, she has the best speaking skills out of anyone in the video, she speaks slowly, chooses all the right words, and makes you feel important, its almost like she is telling you a secret about interviewing.
She was my favorite! (I wonder who she is)
She mentioned some great ideas about interviewing. She said that an ethnographer must represent knowledge from the point of view of the person they are interviewing, and NOT their own opinion. Its like the difference between doing a psychological analysis where you try to find out whats "wrong" with a person (fly on wall) and trying to live in someone's shoes for an hour or two.
She also said that the person being interviewed should feel like this is the most important moment ever, they should trust the interviewer, and should be charmed by him or her.
This is not only true for an interviewer interviewee relationship, but on a much larger scale. In all social situations connecting with another person is very important. Life is largely based on acknowledging people, and trying to connect with them. Its common courtesy to make eye contact and smile and act like your interested when we are out in public. I feel like not that many people still adhere to these social "rules" that we call common courtesy. If we all gave each other common courtesy would there be genocides in south Africa? or would slavery had ever happened? or the Holocaust? but i guess that's a whole different issue.
She also mentioned that we, the interviewer, must make our interviewee "sing." I love this term, because singing is such a liberating activity that a person just completely opens up when they sing.
I took notes on this video, and will probably use my notes to prepare for my interview.
This video is a great ethnography on the interviewer! I enjoyed it a lot!
the video is educational, and helpful and I can be on the lookout to ensure that I don't make the same mistakes the interviewers made. It was interesting and entertaining to see people had so much to say about what seems to me a simple process of buying jeans.
I agree with Mohammad with referring to that in the video there was alot said about a simple normal process of buying jeans. This video helped clear up any misunderstandings I had about ethnography and the process. With this video I now really feel comfortable with the term participant observer and the differences between that and a person who is just asking questions. I also understand what the people on the street, who stop others to ask questions, are going through. Im interested in this because I pass by these people everyday just from walking to school.
The video makes it seem a lot easier to interview someone than it really is. It gives a lot of great pointers and techniques of how to interview but it does take practice and several interviews to make it comfortable. It does not factor in that even if the interviewer is prepared, that the interviewee would be prepared as well. However, the way to approach someone, what to say and how to not use "thats interesting" so much really does help in interviews. I think this also goes to the daily every day conversations.
Watching the video helped provide an outline on what things that I might do unconsciously. It feels as if their telling us not to worry about certain things we do like nodding 10 thousand times or saying interesting but on the back of our minds we know we will be doing that. This is probably one of the hardest things I should improve on and practice before heading out for an actual interview. There's also a barrier in which people who are being interviewed might seem that they have mental block based on the words they say. To over come these barriers we as interviewers must make them feel relaxed as they state in the interview before we can acquire the information we need. This is also one of the most challenging aspect of this film that I wish we all can achieve.
I always felt it was harder to be the interviewee than the interviewer. Personally I get terrified when im being interviewed, for something like a jod. one thing that was mentioned in the video, about groups, and how group interviews are good, i totaly understand that. i wouold feel alot beter if i was being inteview with a few more people that i know, it makes me feel more comfortable.
there"s aot that goes into interviewing a person, some of the things mentioned like the bit about the camera and filming even before the interview starts. I am glad the post was made, it is really helpful, and now i have an idea as to how tocreate an acceptable interview
i think it was very smart of them to use a simple thing, like buying jeans, to show the dos and donts of interviewing. it helped me clearly see what to avoid when i am interviewing and what i need to do to conduct a successful interview. im sure it will prove useful when i am interviewing my key cultural consultant for my mini ethnography.
I never seen my self doing an interview, I guess this video helped me out and gave me some tips. This video gave me good advice that I used for my mini-ethnography anthro project. i think the street interviewing is the most hardest part because whenever I get stopped on the street, and someone tries to talk to me or advertise me something. All I do is just turn the music louder and walk by and don't even bother saying anything. I guess it showed me with the proper technique it could be done.
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