As an innovation professional, I’ve been asked on many occasions, by both colleagues and ex-clients of mine – How do we uncover impactful insights from the one-on-one user interviews we do? One of the key concerns mentioned over and over again is that we are “scraping the surface”, merely touching the tip of the ice berg.
My response, and what I’ll touch upon in this article, is the art of probing. Being able to ask (or not ask) the right questions at the right time leads us to juicy discoveries we very much crave. Let me give you an example. Suppose you ask:
“Have you visited a bank recently?” and the respondent replies, “Yes.”
The next question (i.e. the probe) is: “Like where?” Suppose the answer is, “Those in town.”
How you follow up from here, is going to make the difference. You can probe further by asking “Bugis? Raffles City? Or Shenton Way?” and get a “Yes/No” response, or ask “Can you name me which branches you’ve visited and how were your experiences there?” – the latter, I presume would spark a much richer and detailed conversation.
As demonstrated above, your ability to probe might directly influence the quality of data you’ll get from the interviews you run, but this ain’t rocket science. Experienced interviewers use a set of probing methods habitually, but they are rarely codified. Based on my personal experiences and desk research, I’ve summarised 5 probing methods I deem as the most effective.
1. THE MIRROR
The first probe I’ll share consists of simply mirroring the last thing someone said, and asking them to continue. The mirror probe is particularly useful when a respondent is describing a process, or an event.
‘I see. You walk into a branch and see a long queue. Then what happens?’
This probe is neutral and didn’t redirect the interview. It shows that you understand what’s been said so far and encourages the respondents to continue. But use it sparingly - if you use mirror probe too often, you might hear an exasperated ‘Why do you keep repeating what I just said?!”
2. THE WHYS
This may be the most common form of probe among experienced interviewers. Respondents give you an answer, and you probe for more by saying: “Why exactly do you say that?” and “Why exactly do you feel that way?”
As a rule of thumb, ask no more than five whys when probing on a particular point. There are no hard numbers to follow, but most experienced researchers would agree that three to four whys should suffice. But do take note when using off-the-cuff probes like these. You might run into a situation where your respondent gets tired and starts to turn on “auto-pilot” mode and start to answer the supposed probing questions before you even ask them.
3. THE AFFIRMATIVE
You can encourage the respondent to continue with the narrative by just making affirmative responses, like “Uh-huh,” or “Oh, I see,” or “Right” and so on. Nodding and smiling can also be considered as part of the affirmative response you give.
This is especially useful in the Asian context where affirmation is sometimes “expected”, or you run the risk of being deemed rude. Some data to support the case: Experiments conducted by Matarazzo in 1964 confirmed that respondents spoke on average 30% longer in instances where he made affirmative responses as compared to instances when he doesn’t.
4. THE SILENT
The most difficult technique to learn is the silent probe, which consists of just remaining quiet and waiting for the respondent to continue. The silence may be accompanied by a nod or by a mumbled “uh-huh” as you focus on your note pad. The silent probe sometimes produces more information than direct questioning does. At least at the beginning of an interview, respondents look to you for guidance as to whether or not they’re on the right track. They want to know whether they’re “giving you what you want.” Most of the time, you want the respondent to define the relevant information and not the other way round.
Some respondents are more eloquent than others and require very little probing. Others are more reflective and take their time. Inexperienced interviewers tend to jump in with verbal probes as soon as a respondent goes silent. Meanwhile, the respondent may just be reflecting, gathering thoughts and preparing to say something important. You can kill those moments (and there are a lot of them) with your interruptions.
But with that said, the silent probe is a high-risk technique, which is why beginners should avoid it. If a respondent is genuinely at the end of a thought and you don’t provide further guidance, your silence can become awkward. You may even lose your credibility as an interviewer. The silent probe takes practice, but it’s worth every bit of the effort.
5. THE HOOK
A particularly effective probing technique is called the hook (think of yourself as detectives hooking for bigger pieces of information). The hook happens when you act like you already know something in order to get people to open up.
An example of how this has been used: When I interviewed a group of respondents in Philippines about their spending habits – many were reluctant to go beyond the usual meals, rental and entertainment. No matter how I did the math, the expenditures and savings just doesn’t add up. I was at my wits end as I quickly realised that they were reluctant to talk freely about money.
What I did in response, was to spend more time with the respondents outside of the formal interview. And eventually during one of these coffee chats, I realised that their additional source of income came from their parents – many young Filipino millennials still ask their parents for money despite having a stable job and the “secret stash” is rarely mentioned for one reason: saving face (mianzi).
Once I heard about this, I began to drop hints about how I heard that parents are supporting the extravagant lifestyle of millennials in Philippines. As I did this, the respondents opened up and quickly confirmed what I’d found out.
Every good detective/ journalist/ interviewer knows this technique well. As you learn a piece of a puzzle from one respondent, you use it with the next to get more information, and so on. The more you seem to know, the more comfortable people feel about talking to you and the less people feel they are actually divulging anything. It seems like they are not the ones who are giving away the “secrets”. Baiting also prompts some respondents to jump in and correct you if they think you have “gotten it all wrong”. In some cases, I’ve purposely give them the wrong clue to provoke a correcting response.
Bonus: I Don’t Know, or Do I?
One of the really tough things you run into is when your respondent keeps repeating “I don’t know”.
In qualitative research projects, where you choose respondents precisely because you think they know something of interest, the “don’t know” refrain can be especially frustrating. We generally distinguish the don’t-know responses into 4 different categories:
1. I don’t know (and frankly I don’t care);
2. I don’t know (and it’s none of your business);
3. I don’t know (actually, I do know, but you wouldn’t be interested in what I have to say about that); and
4. I don’t know (and I wish you’d change the subject because this line of questioning makes me really uncomfortable).
Occasionally there might also be a fifth: “(I wish I could help you but) I really don’t know.” Sometimes you could get beyond this, sometimes you will never. You have to face the fact that not everyone who volunteers to be interviewed is a good respondent. If you probe those people for information and they say, “I don’t know” too often, they’ll be tempted to make something up just to satisfy you. Sometimes, you just have to take the “don’t know” for an answer and cut your losses by moving on.
———————————
Alvin Chia is the Innovation Program Lead of DBS Bank. Outside of work, Alvin lectures as an Adjunct Faculty and is completing his doctoral dissertation with Delft University of Technology.
Follow Alvin on LinkedIn.