User Interviewing at the SF Union Square Apple Store

Since my user interview’s purpose was to get a closer look at an entire domain, I created a very brief interview with a couple questions to use only with a few people. If kept short, I could just gather a general idea of my domain. Then, if necessary, I could ad-lib follow up questions related to the answers I received. The gist of my interview was:

What is your age?

Where do you live?

How much time do you spend each week on the internet?

How much of that time is work versus personal?

Do you use any kinds of apps, products, and services to improve your productivity? Which ones, and how often? Have you spent money on any?

Coincidentally, the day I headed to Union Square to conduct the interviews, was the Apple Keynote. So, instead of wandering around Union Square, I decided to cross the street and interview near the Apple Store instead. Although my sampling could be skewed by interviewing those interested in tech, I weighed that it would be worth it to hear the thoughts of those who may have stronger opinions about my domain—making my sample size somewhat biased, but in return, giving the responses more focus.

The few people I interviewed consisted of a couple from Virginia, a nurse from Oakland, and a single SF software engineer — so my sampling turned out fairly normal after all. My tiny amount of data suggests that your work-time internet usage may correlate with your experience with productivity apps and services, but in reality, the software engineer was an outlier:

She used significantly more internet (personal and work), has made several purchases in many types of apps that improve her productivity and well-being, and had far more information to offer me about her thoughts on the problem domain. All of these factors could be affected by her age, location, occupation, and many other things to make her different from my other participants.

The tourists, however, mentioned they had been using an itinerary-type app to keep track of their vacation, which sparked my interest (as a list-lover). I recalled a conversation I had with several of my peers about lists, and how we store our calendars and to-dos. This started a whirlwind of ideas, and the seed was planted in my mind.