When you are visiting office settings, it is a good idea to ask your business stakeholders about dress code and office practices. Even if you always visit your client in a suit and tie, asking this question is critical. On many occasions we have been asked to remove our neckties or leave our jackets behind so that employees don’t mistake us as managers, or worse, an internal audit team.

Equally important is being dressed for the specific environment. The attire in a medical center is drastically different than that of a construction site. It is not unheard of for researchers shifting between different projects to have to change quickly between sessions, like Clark Kent/Superman in the phone booth.

Home visits are measurably more challenging than office visits, as an individual is inviting you into their personal space. While it may feel awkward, take cues from your environment. If you see a line of shoes along the door, ask your host if you should remove your own.

At the same time, when a participant agrees to meet you in their home, they often feel the social pressure of hosting you. To balance social graces with the level of propriety desired of research, we recommend accepting a glass of water (assuming it is offered). You do not need to drink the water, but by merely accepting it you are fitting an expected social interaction and putting your participant at ease.

Whether you are meeting at a participant’s place of work or in their home, it is important to not be in their personal space for too long. This applies to both before and after a research session.

Remote sessions are easier in the sense that personal space is not a factor. Still, it is important to follow certain social norms. If you’re sharing the participant’s screen, warn them that anything on their screen will be visible to the observers. This includes the tasks being explored but also anything on the participant’s desktop. We have inadvertently seen personal or racy content on participants’ screens more times than we care to admit.

If the warning wasn’t enough and something unsavory or unprofessional comes across the screen, the best course of action is to try to ignore it. If the problem persists or is distracting, don’t be afraid to use technical challenges as an excuse and ask the participant to close other applications in order to avoid “overwhelming the testing tool.”

We speak differently to our colleagues than we do our managers. We have different inflections when discussing life and work with significant others than with parents and friends. With this in mind, the tone you have with research participants sets the baseline for your relationship with them throughout the research session.

All too commonly, an employee learns they are being used in a research study and internally hears, the company wants to find a way to remove my position. It is also common that they see researchers as an extension of management.

An easy way to alleviate any concerns about job security is to frame your role as researcher like so: “I’m here to make your job easier by understanding how you approach your work. This may include frustrations or workarounds you’ve uncovered. Rest assured that while we are recording, our aim is to keep your information as anonymous as possible and we can go ‘off the record’ any time you feel it’s necessary.”

In improv, a scene is considered complete when one of the actors calls “Scene!” during the performance. While Chapter 10 explores in depth some improvisational techniques as a tool for research, you can’t literally shout “Scene!” or “Done!” in front of a research participant. Still, it is important to infer when a participant is finished providing information on a given topic or with the research session altogether. While research often employs the laddering method to probe on the “why” of a task, a good researcher knows how to stop just short of pushing too far.

You might define “done” for a participant when they’re giving you the same answer two times in a row, or changing from thorough explanations to one-word answers. Be sensitive to how your participants respond to your cues. It is very difficult to gain someone’s trust and comfort once the cadence and ease of a conversation is lost.

Voice from the Streets: Lis Hubert

The often-overlooked, but vitally important, participant warm-up part of any session is actually the part that I look forward to the most. Why? Because it is during this time that I’m able to gauge where a participant is at, and adjust my approach to match. My research and observation senses are primed and ready, and my facilitation and communication senses kick into gear.

In order to find this alignment, for each session, I usually start by warming up myself. I start with a mental warm-up by closing my eyes for a few moments, clearing my head, and then reminding myself of the recruitment data for the person I’m about to talk to. I also work to remember that the next hour is not about me, but about someone else completely.

I then warm up my body by making sure I’ve gotten up and walked a little, rolled my neck a few times or stretched my arms...whatever I can do to reset my muscles to prepare them for a new person.

Once the participant has arrived (either in person, or on the other end of a call), I go through my checklist of logistics comments and questions, and then I ask them the all-important, “OK, so tell me about yourself. In regards to <topic we are discussing> what is your role or how do you relate?” As I listen to their response, I create a mental map of the participant. I note their communication style, any word preferences, their posture. Then I immediately meet them where they are by mimicking and mirroring their characteristics back to them.

That’s really it, and it hardly ever fails. Within those first two to three minutes, I almost always see or hear even the most shy or guarded participant jovially and happily engaged in the session.

Small talk is a learned skill. The easiest way to practice it is to use priming questions. These include demographic questions including age, profession, and familiarity with a product or toolkit. Small talk goes beyond that, though, and offers a more conversational tone to the session. Don’t be afraid to offer some of your own personal information, as it may help open your participant up to the discussion. Be careful, though. This is not a friend or colleague you are meeting with but a research participant. While sharing personal information is appropriate, always make sure you are maintaining an appropriate level of professionalism and not marring the data collected.

We already discussed the role of the moderator and the note taker, but we did not focus on how notes are captured. Since we want to focus on human conversations, it is important to have a system that is as unobtrusive as possible. The two options for capturing notes are straightforward: pen and paper or on a computer. While there is no right answer for one or the other, there are considerations for each.

Warming up, whether it is the oven before cooking or your muscles before playing sports, is critical. Research is no different. We refer to warming up as the softer side of research because the transition from practice to research often happens seamlessly and, depending on the scale of the research, may require us to revisit these exercises throughout a session.

Still, research hinges on warming up. Think for a moment how a participant would behave if you walked into a room and immediately started asking them personal financial or health-related information? These are sensitive topics, and balancing the rich data with the appropriate level of humanity and empathy is key to gathering good data. In longer interviews and discussions, taking breaks from the script to hear a tangential story allows participants to open up and is just as valuable as their insights to product design.

Soft skills and warming up aren’t exclusive to the beginning of a session. Near the close of sessions it is not uncommon to circle back to more social discussions. In this way, the personal “meat” of a discussion is sandwiched between softer, more lightweight questions. This can go a long way in leaving a participant feeling heard and respected, and with positive feelings toward your product and research team.

Take a mental audit of your coworkers. Who do you talk to on a regular basis? Who might you know in passing but have not built a relationship with? Focus on the second list and, once a day (or once a week), make an effort to strike up a conversation with them. This doesn’t have to be anything overly personal or awkward, but as you cross paths in the mailroom or kitchen, rather than simply saying hello ask what projects they are working on, how they like the new office renovations, or how they fared during the last snowstorm. Make a concerted effort to change whom you speak with each day and cycle back on the colleagues you spoke with early on. Who knows, an added benefit could be some stronger office relationships too.

If you work in a small office, or would rather practice with total strangers, think of the coffee shop you frequent. Do you simply pay your barista and go on your way? Do you stand in line staring at your phone? Instead of doing that, strike up a conversation with the clerk or other patrons. We don’t mean that you should pry, but using simple icebreakers like “I hope the seasonal latte comes back soon” will build your confidence in having conversations with people you don’t know well.