Interview schedule
This morning, we are meeting with Jerry (who worked in the West End House coop). The meeting will be to discuss how to make the coop homes become more accessible. Below is a brief plan for the interview.
| Item | What questions |
| Introduction to us | Thanks for meeting us, I am Ying and this here is XXXX. We are the stage two planning student from Newcastle University. Our project is about developing a method to co-design self-built homes, so now we are doing some research and collecting data for this project. Here is the project brief for information. Briefly we are looking into a way for your residents to contribute to the design of new houses that you build. Our main goal is to make the co-design self-built homes become more accessible to the public.
(Would you mind if we recorded our conversation？) |
| Discussion of Jerry’s work | To start, can you tell us a little about what you do in the west end housing co-op?
– Could you share some information of how this participatory design process happen？ -What is the main requirement for the resident? And how do you achieve these requirements in the design process? -What is the feedback from residents after your designing and are they satisfied? If not, why? -How can the council be involved more directly? |
| Discussion of the community | On the community website, it says that co-operative is a group of people who jointly manage the houses and control the way their housing is run.
-Could you briefly explain what your community does? -Who would you need to engage when developing plans for a new development? -How do residents decide on changes to the existing buildings? -What is the biggest challenge you meet? |
| Intro of prototype | Thank you. As noted in the email, one aspect of this project is to come up with a digital tool or method to support non-experts come up with a building design. We looked into 3d models and website. We’ll show you some project ideas ask you a few questions.
-How the participation will affect the design process? -What you talk about in the monthly meeting? -How do you communicate with the non-expert(like residents) to make them know how the process going -Do you think digital tools could help to reduce the distance between you and the other client?(resident) -As we know, you community already have a website, does it effective? -What is the strength & weakness of the current website? |
| Review of prototype | We are thinking of doing a 3d model or create a blog. 3D model can make people more easy to understand co-design self-built house by the visual effect and create a blog to record the meeting to the public is effective for people to know the process of design.
-Would this be of use for your organization? How could we approach this? -If not, why? |
| Next steps | We are so glad to meet you and thank you for your feedback. |
Hi team, that’s a good outline / schedule for your interview.. It’s nice to see you have introduced over-arching discussion points or themes and considered those in the first hand of your column. That’s helpful in order to understand the flow / intended outline of the conversation as you go from the more general questions regarding Jerry / the organisation (helping you to build rapport) to more specific questions in relation to your design project… Remember what we said about contextual interviewing techniques… When you do the interview, you might want to ask Jerry to show you around. You get a feel for the area and use the material setting to prompt further questions. Finally, note who is taking the lead asking questions and who is taking charge of keeping notes… So for now, good luck and don’t forget to confirm interview slots with me so that this can be registered.