Much of our work involves helping people find out what clients want, think or believe. Sometimes interviews, questionnaires and focus groups fail to produce complete, correct, reliable answers – even in safety-critical systems such as aircraft, where pilots know their life literally depends on giving software developers complete and correct requirements.
Interviews, questionnaires and focus groups can fall short due to the way human memory and communication function. Some types of knowledge can’t be accessed directly via interviews, questionnaires and focus groups – but can be accessed via other methods. And underlying principles of human communication, such as Don’t tell the other person things that they already know often lead to communication failures.
We’ve developed a detailed framework that maps appropriate methods onto different types of knowledge. The framework can be simplified as
Do/Don’t/Can’t/Won’t.
Do is what people do tell you when you ask.
Don’t is what people are willing to tell you but neglect to do so.
Can’t is what people are unable to express in words.
Won’t is what people are unwilling to tell you, for various reasons.
Interviews, questionnaires and focus groups can usually handle the Do category; what people are willing and able to tell you. They can’t handle the other categories, which is where our framework comes in.
We run free, short taster courses introducing methods that can handle the Don’t category; observation, think-aloud, laddering and card sorts. We hope to resume these again soon.
You can read more about the methods on our resources pages. If you have comments or questions, or you’re interested in our courses or consultancy, do get in touch.
Copyleft Hyde & Rugg 2021