At SXSW this year we saw Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, a moody and elliptical portrait of the actor. Despite the filmmaker being a long-time friend of his, Stanton is evasive and mercurial, seeming more earnest when performing music for the camera than in answering questions about his parents or his relationships with women. On more than one occasion, the subject doesn’t respond and just stares off or at the camera or the interviewer. And the interviewer stays quiet for a surprisingly long time.

There was a Q&A after the screening, so I asked the filmmaker about what she thought about the power of silence (for in addition using silence in the interview, they also chose to leave those silences in the final film). She told us “I just wanted to see what would happen, and to see the boundaries of being uncomfortable.”

I found this fascinating; in Interviewing Users I describe a scene from Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man where the director uses silence to gives space for an astonishing and revelatory moment to occur. In this case, “nothing” happened. Of course, as the director reminded me, the “nothing” that happened with Harry Dean Stanton was still something; it revealed a lot about the subject and changed our own experience in hearing his story.

It’s further illustration of the power of silence, even when it doesn’t pay off in the obvious manner and bring something out, it’s still bringing something else out!

In Chapter 1, I argue that in addition to gaining valuable information through interviewing, the process also builds empathy which in turn increases our overall capacity for empathy.

Marc Maron (describing his journey with the WTF podcast), in this Rolling Stone interview, says the same thing in his own way.

But once I started talking to people, I evolved a capacity I never had before, which was to be an empathetic listener. I still step on people a lot, and I interrupt them with my own bullshit. But I was a better person. I was humbled.

Also0 see yesterday’s Maron example here.

About a year ago, Marc Maron (comedian, host of the WTF podcast, and an example in Interviewing Users) was on Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist Podcast. They got into a discussion of interviewing, touching on listening-builds-empathy, the pressure on the interviewer to keep talking and choosing to interrupt.

MM: It’s one-on-one, we’re in a garage, it’s cozy, and I’m pretty much a too-much-information kinda guy and I’ve learned how to listen. I don’t know when that happened. I’m happy it happened but …when I was a kid I grew up with a bipolar father so there’s some part of me that’s wired to emotionally connect with very charismatic volatile people and throughout most of my childhood I would always be attracted to crazy homeless people that walked around where I used to work at this restaurant. I always wanted to hear their stories. I always liked people that were funny and large personalities because I’d been sort of diminished by my father’s brutality in terms of his emotions. And I just find for a long time there I was bitter, and I was “Aw fuck, everyone was out to get to me” and defensive and I’d gotten very cynical and now because of the podcast I’m very empathetic. When I listen, there are times when I’m about to cry, or where I’m so engaged in the story that I’m just happy when …wow I’m into this.

I think that is just my own curiosity, the way I’m wired but I’m very happy that’s happened. I like to listen to people.

CH: It’s something that I certainly I wish I did more sometimes, I’m always like…NO DEAD SPACE, NO DEAD SPACE – always gotta keep talking

MM: I think that’s natural, I do that..Some people criticize for me on my podcast that I occasionally interrupt too much, it’s because they’re not used to listening to interviews the ways I do. A lot of times I interrupt because I get nervous if people are doing some – if someone is a public personality, they’ve got their story, you know, and I can sorta tell when like I’m not the first one to have heard this story, sometimes – it’s happened with Anthrony Bourdain specifically because I wanted to connect with him, but he speaks in public a lot and I listened to part of his interview on Joe Rogan, one because I wanted to see what kind of person he was in conversation and I knew there was a couple of points that he clearly hit regularly so when I heard him start those I was “Yeah, but what about…” I tried to get around them only because I wanted to see if I could get…I ended up getting something different, it was good, it was good. But I’m sorta aware of that stuff. You?

CH: I try to be aware of it, but I also try to keep the conversation going and a lot of times if I’m talking with someone and this is why I don’t do phone interviews because I need to see people, I can tell they are close to finishing a thought and I just don’t want any of those moments where like…if you listen to this podcast you will never hear a [pause} “So….”

Alicia Dornadic (@adorndesign) is a design researcher in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Going to someone’s home for the first time to interview them, especially in an unfamiliar culture and language, can be awkward. Showing up with two researchers, a cameraman and a couple clients in tow – all of whom are over-caffeinated and in need of a bathroom break – can make for a circus act. These were three-hour long interviews, too. So, despite our best efforts to arrange feeding and peeing times before getting to the person’s home, we usually all had to pee at some point during the interview. But our translator was the absolute queen of tinkling. The first day I was understanding. “Maybe she’s sick or nervous,” I thought. She would take two to four breaks during each interview, which left the rest of us smiling and pointing at things dumbly, trying to make conversation in her absence. By the end of the week, my patience was shot. I was ready to strap some adult diapers on her. I would glower at her every time she asked for water, tea, or a soda. “Really?” I thought, my eyes on fire, “Should you really be having that?” I’m not proud of this. But I couldn’t help being annoyed.

Finally, karma came to bite me on the ass. It was at the end of a long interview at the end of a long day, and I broke down and asked if I could use the restroom. Our host pointed to it, and I stumbled inside, missing the 2-inch step down into it. There wasn’t a lot of light in the bathroom, and it was cluttered. I couldn’t find a switch. But no matter. I go. I reach for the toilet paper, and BOOM! CRASH! I take down the entire metal toilet paper rack off the wall, and it crashes onto the tiled floor. It was too dark to see how to fix it, so I had to come out and explain what I had done and apologize. Not only that, but my explanation and apology had to be translated! Translated and explained to two researchers, a cameraman, a couple of clients and our participant. It ended up not being a big deal, but I was embarrassed. And I felt guilty for all my negative thoughts towards our translator. As much as I was annoyed at our tinkler friend, at least she didn’t break anything.

Listen at the link or through the widget below.

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To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac).

These war stories are at times inspiring, at times comical, but always interesting. As I have followed them, I have increasingly been figuring out ways I might be able to use them with teams, clients and students. For example, I might share a selection of them of them to give a new team some sense of what to expect when we go into the field together. In addition, when I teach at the Technological University of Panama next year as a visiting Fulbright scholar, I plan to use these stories to help give students a better idea of the variety and nuance of ethnographic work. War Stories are rich not just in data but also in terms of technique, and they have made me think about my own experiences in the field.

Thanks to Susan for such a thoughtful and heartfelt piece, and to Core77 for publishing it!

• You can find two interviews about Interviewing Users now online. A readable interview at Ethnography Matters and a listenable interview with Denise Lee Yohn.
• Grant McCracken posted his awesome foreword to Interviewing Users.
• Coming up in a few weeks is the Interviewing Users launch party, June 3 in San Francisco. Stay tuned for info on the New York party.
• This Wednesday is my free webcast about Interviewing Users. O’Reilly will be recording it if you can’t make it.
• I just received another great War Story and will posting it in the next couple of days. Meanwhile, check out Susan Dray’s thought-provoking take on these stories.
• I’m talking to prospective clients in the Middle East and in the Midwest. Verbal, if not geographic, symmetry.
• Ten years gone: From May 2003 – FreshMeat: The Houses of the Wholly, Weight Loss Through Brain Washing.
• What we’re consuming: Bob’s Burgers, I Don’t Want Your Fucking App, Iron Man 3, Kutschy Rye.

In Chapter 2, I talk about how body language (see good and bad examples here and here) not only signals that you are listening to your interviewee, it also signals you to listen better. I based on this on some writing by Malcolm Gladwell (in Blink, but originally in The Naked Face) about how our physical self can induce changes in our emotional selves.

Now there’s more research to back up that claim. From this WSJ article

Researchers are finding that wearing a smile brings certain benefits, like slowing down the heart and reducing stress. This may even happen when people aren’t aware they are forming a smile. The work follows research that established that the act of smiling can make you feel happier. Frowning also may have a health effect: Preventing people from frowning, such as with the use of Botox, can help alleviate depression.

“You can influence mental health by what you do with your face, whether you smile more or frown less,” says Eric Finzi, a dermatologic surgeon and co-author of the study on frowning.

Bonus: the article includes this compelling image, explaining “Holding the sticks in the mouth activates the same muscles we use for smiling.”

EM: How much heterogeneity is there between companies / clients? Are there any broad typological characterizations of companies and their attitude towards user research? Does this inform different ways of delivering research results, different ways of “talking to” these companies?

SP: There are no doubt dozens of frameworks (see for example, Jess McMullin’s Design Maturity Model on page 142) for characterizing the organization. But let me throw out a new one: in the Passover Haggadah there is the example of the four sons. One wise, one wicked, one simple and one who does not know how to ask a question. The wise son asks to have all of the history, insight and other findings explained to him. We’re encouraged to explain everything to him. The wicked son separates himself from the issue by asking why it’s important to you. We’re told to tell him why it’s important to us (and not persuade him that it should be important to him). The simple son doesn’t even focus in on the issue and just asks “What is this?” so we’re to give him the headline. We’re told to approach the son who doesn’t even know how to ask a question and take the initiative to explain things to him. And one scholar writes about a fifth son who isn’t even in the room and it’s up to us to seek him out and give him the lowdown.

Sure, it may be a bit forced but it’s not hard to see those sons as archetypes of individuals, departments or entire workplace cultures. Whatever your framework is, you obviously need to understand the specifics of who you are dealing with and have a range of approaches for responding. All of this stuff with people (be they clients or research subjects) is messy and I’m not so comfortable with pre-emptive categorization and its resultant tactical choices.

Thanks to Tricia Wang and Jenna Burrell and everyone else at Ethnography Matters for a great discussion.

This is a wonderful book. Steve can teach us how to improve our ability to penetrate other worlds and examine our assumptions. Ethnography has suffered terribly in the last few years. Lots of people claim to know it, but in fact the art and science of the method have been badly damaged by charlatans and snake oil salesmen. Let’s seize this book as an opportunity to start again. Let Steve Portigal be our inspired guide.

Core77 has posted an excerpt from Interviewing Users.

From my introduction to the excerpt:

I’ve talked to a lot of practitioners about their own experiences in doing fieldwork and often they try to address challenges when they experience the symptoms, but that’s usually not the right time. Consider this analogy: if you have insomnia, the best solutions are not those that you roll out at 3am when you can’t sleep. To effectively counteract insomnia you have to make specific choices during the day, before you go to bed. Doing research with people is the same thing and ideally you approach this sort of work with a well-defined perspective that will inform all of the inevitable detailed, specific, tactical problem solving.

• Interviewing Users is out! Huzzah! There’s been lots of enthusiasm and already some good feedback!
• Core77 has posted an excerpt here.
• I’m doing a few interviews for the book. Look for them to start showing up online in the next couple of weeks.
• You’re invited to the Interviewing Users launch party, June 3 in San Francisco. And stay tuned for info on the New York party, too!
• Don’t forget about the free webcast next week.
• Some good networking on hand for this week, catching up with people and talk about their businesses, careers, goals and of course mine.
• Ten years gone: From May 2003 – Why Calvin Pees, Bugs and Daffy for Landmine Awareness.
• What we’re consuming: Little Yangon, Black Blizzard, Teddy Bear.

Here’s a really interesting project about How People Talk to Themselves in Their Heads.

He would ask them to wear a microphone headset attached to a digital recorder and speak aloud their thoughts as he followed closely behind with a camera. He would not be able to hear what they were saying…[The] videos are simultaneously naturalistic and as objective as possible. In the lab, in front of a researcher, people are often reluctant to reveal exactly what they are thinking. Writing a diary of inner speech is somewhat more private, but many people find it annoying to regularly drop everything and make an entry; sometimes it’s difficult to remember what one was thinking about even minutes earlier. In Irving’s videos people are living their lives more or less as usual, walking and talking to themselves as though they were unaccompanied. Of course, people who are not completely comfortable with the scenario sometimes speak into the microphone as though trying to entertain someone else. And getting people’s inner speech on tape captures only linguistic forms of thought, neglecting the kind of thinking that happens in images and scenes, for example.

The notion that unfettered, deeper self-exploration and self-expression can come when not interacting with the interrogator – to the point here of nearly eliminating the interrogation entirely – evokes the (I presume mostly obsolete) approach to therapy where the patient does not face the therapist.

I find the videos compelling (and voyeuristic to the extreme). Check out the other videos at the link – the ones that take place without the strolling seem more like a diary and less like a peek into the stream of consciousness. But for each of them, see if they pass the sniff-test for you: is the person talking the way they are because of the experiment (they know they are being recorded; they feel they need to come up with something to say, they are aware of their own “voice”, etc.) or is it really getting as deep as the researcher claims? I was mostly convinced but a sliver of doubt remains.

In the research we do, we make no claim of naturalism; we certainly want to direct and influence what is being shared, and we build rapport to facilitate openness and honesty. This approach isn’t likely to be appropriate for us, but it’s certainly provocative to look at the output of an opposite approach – where the interviewer is effectively absented and rapport is not a consideration.

I’m grateful for all the enthusiasm and am looking forward to people’s thoughts when they’ve had a chance to read and digest and reflect.

…when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.

An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge.

It’s as if we’ve broken the ice with the worst possible idea, and now that the discussion has started, people suddenly get very creative.

Then he applies this principle to creative work.

I call it the McDonald’s Theory: people are inspired to come up with good ideas to ward off bad ones.
…
The next time a project is being discussed in its early stages, grab a marker, go to the board, and throw something up there. The idea will probably be stupid, but that’s good! McDonald’s Theory teaches us that it will trigger the group into action…Say, “This is probably crazy, but what if we.…”

The article is short and direct and makes the point so well. This is an area I’ve been exploring over the past year or so (see article on Core77 here and slide deck from SXSW here) and it’s great to see others doing so as well.

If the singularity will eventually bring us self-replicating machines then maybe this advocacy movement is the initial landing party establishing a cultural beachhead.

Also see Rob Walker’s classic Consumed piece about the Live Strong bracelet here.

• This is the week! Interviewing Users will be available on Thursday!
• On May 15th I’ll be doing a free webcast entitled Interviewing Users: Uncovering Compelling Insights. Hope to “see” you there!
• I’m putting together a pitch presentation for a long-time favorite client, where we haven’t worked together for about a decade! It’s fun to learn how things have changed in their organization and think about what we can do for them now.
• Ten years gone: From April 2003 – In Their Hummers, Right Beside Uncle Sam, Rolling Stones lingerie.
• What we’re consuming: Shanghai Dumpling King, capybaras, The Death of the Author, Party Down.

I had a really delicious meal at The Food Market in the hip neighborhood of Hampden, but I did snort with laughter when they brought over what I thought was going to be a beet salad.

Have we hit Peak Experience (and not in the Maslovian sense) when donuts are reframed as experiences? Closing the loop on my last visit to the area, this was a total disappointment. Disappointing donuts and a weird experience. Fractured Prune was located in an Italian restaurant but I could not figure out where the donut counter was. It turned out to be shared with the restaurant. I had to ask two people once I was actually in this little restaurant where the donuts were. There’s no familiar visual cue of shelves of donuts, since all are made-to-order. I did have nice chat with a fellow patron who told me they were great donuts. I didn’t let him see me leave the half-eaten ones sitting in the bag on the picnic table outside. Not good.

Street art in Hampden.