Before going to journalism school, I wanted to be a therapist. My mom is a social worker and people told me I was a good listener, so it was easy to imagine nodding my head while someone sitting on a sofa told me about their life. That plan ended when I went to a music festival in Chicago the summer before college. I watched the reporters in the pit scribble in their notebooks and realized that I still wanted to listen to people's stories and ask the right questions, but in a different way. I didn't become a therapist or a journalist. But I found myself in the content department of Portent, where the questions I asked and my ability to listen proved invaluable. At work, I often use my listening and interviewing skills, but a few months ago a client project asked me to take those skills to Latest Mailing Database the next level. This particular customer created features and solutions without first understanding the problems faced by their potential customers. As a result, they struggled to find a suitable market for their product.
Who would want to buy this kind of product? What were they worried about? What publications have they read? What challenges did they have at work? To answer these types of questions, we had to conduct many interviews, which allowed me to improve my interview and listening techniques. Here are 4 tips I learned from this process that will help you build those skills on your next research project.1. Ask open-ended questions How you ask questions is important. It's tempting to focus on what you want to know rather than how you ask, but it's important to Latest Mailing Database do the latter. If you don't, you risk introducing your opinions into the research process even if you don't know about it. Open-ended questions allow the person you are speaking with to give a free answer while someone can answer a closed question with a "yes" or "no". According to the Nielsen Norman Group.
Closed questions stop the conversation and eliminate surprises: what you expect is what you get. » If you ask closed-ended questions, you risk guiding someone's answers to things you think are true. Closed questions can also influence people in certain answers. Think about these two questions: “What does your morning routine look like? vs. "Do you rush outside in the morning?" The first question allows for many different answers. The Latest Mailing Database second question assumes they are rushing. I found myself asking closed questions during my interviews with potential clients. I intended to come with an open mind, but also had an idea of who the interviewees were based on previous conversations with the client. When I caught myself doing this, I reminded myself that I could be wrong about what I thought I knew.2. Be aware of your biases It is impossible not to have bias in your research.