Excavate the Story

As the interviewer, you will have to work to excavate the story. If you ask a participant to tell you about the last time they watched streaming entertainment, they will likely respond with something along the lines of: “I watched The Good Place last night after dinner.” That’s not a very good story.

Conversational norms set the expectation for a 50/50 back-and-forth pattern when two people are conversing. This means that each person spends roughly 50% of the time talking. I say something, and then you say something. If I ask you a short question, you are likely to respond with a short answer. As the interviewer, you need to reset this expectation. One of the most effective ways to do this is to inform your participant that you would like them to share their full story with you, to share as many details as possible, to leave nothing out, and that, when they are done with their story, you’ll ask for missing details.

Even so, you may still have to dig to uncover the full story. You can use common storytelling tactics to help you do so. A good story has a protagonist who encounters experiences on a timeline. Temporal prompts are one of the most effective ways to guide the participant through their own story. You can ask, “Start at the beginning. What happened first?” You can use the experience map you created in Chapter 4 to help guide your participant. Prompt for the beginning of the story. If your participant isn’t sure where to start, you can further prompt, “Where were you? Set the scene for me.” As the participant tells their story, you can encourage them to keep going by asking them, “What happened next?” Sometimes they might skip a few steps, and you may need to ask, “What happened before that?” Thinking about their story as having a beginning, a middle, and an end can help you guide the participant. Use your customer-experience map to help you track their story. Listen for specific nodes. Ask about nodes that were left out of the story.

Stories also take place in specific locations; protagonists encounter challenges, and they receive help from supporting characters. Other characters might present obstacles or interfere with the protagonist’s progress. Keep these elements in mind as they’ll help you tease out what the participant forgets. You might ask, “Who was with you?” “What challenges did you encounter?” “How did you overcome that challenge?” “Did anyone help you?”

You’ll notice, as you excavate the story, that your participant will bounce back and forth between the story they are telling and generalizing about their behavior. You might ask, “What challenges did you face?” and they may respond with, “I usually…” or, “In general, I have this challenge…” You’ll want to gently guide them back to telling you about this specific instance. You might say, “In this specific example, did you face that challenge?”

Excavating the story takes practice. It might feel awkward at first. It will definitely feel inefficient. When your participant jumps to a generalization (e.g., “I always face this challenge”), it’s going to feel like a shortcut. It’s going to tempt you to conclude that’s the real need, pain point, or desire. In those moments, it’s critical that you remember the research on how poorly we perform at answering direct questions and how susceptible our responses are to cognitive biases.

Keep the interview grounded in specific stories to ensure that you collect data about your participants’ actual behavior, not their perceived behavior. And remember, like most of the habits in this book, it takes practice. Don’t get discouraged. Keep at it. You will get better with time.