28. How do I Interview like a Detective (part 2)?

Drew Freeman: Hello again, Joe.

Joe Marcantano: Drew, good to talk to you again.

Drew Freeman: Oh, my gosh, that was the most formal intro we've ever done. Okay, so we're just gonna leave that exactly where it was and plow right on through. So we are here for kind of part two or week two of our little miniseries on interviewing like a detective. So if you haven't heard part one, which was really about thinking about all of the prep work and kind of setting the scene and setting the stage for a good interview, a good usability interview, I highly recommend going back to last week's episode and listening to that one first. This episode will still be here for you when you're done with that one. Okay, so with that being said, let's jump on into part two. So, Joe, how do I interview like a detective?

Joe Marcantano: So, this week I want to focus more on the nuts and bolts, the actual conducting of the interview. You've kind of figured out your space. If you're doing it in person, you've chosen the right moderator, and now you're actually ready to start running the interviews. And so the first thing I have written down is have a plan. Be ready to abandon it.

Drew Freeman: Oh, my gosh. You've got the old kind of military adage that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Or who is it, Mike Tyson that says everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth?

Joe Marcantano: Exactly. So when you're thinking about an interview, you want to have a carefully thought out and tested discussion guide. So you've written a full discussion guide. You've run it by somebody else. You've done the dry run with someone with a mock participant. But be ready to walk away from it. Be ready to explore the tangents that come up or to have to jump around because the conversation kind of flowed naturally in a way other than you expected. These things are okay. These things are fine. Think of your plan more like a checklist than a script.

Drew Freeman: This is absolutely another one of those areas where UX interviewing is an art and not a science.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, you're gonna have, you know, people are people. Right. So they're not going toa think of things in the same order. Somebody might be 10 minutes past whatever the first thing you were talking about was and go, oh, wait, I thought of something else. And they want to jump back, and that's cool. That's okay. Let them do that.

Drew Freeman: And that's not even to speak of any technical issues that you might run into.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. So if you're testing a prototype and it suddenly stops working or it breaks, what are you going to do now? Maybe your plan is, hey, is it okay if we reschedule and, finish this up later? That's a plan. It's not necessarily the best one, but it's a plan.

Drew Freeman: I was going to say an even better plan is, hey, I'm having some difficulties with this prototype. It's justnna take me 30 seconds or a minute to reset it. I'll be right back with you. But of course, at that point, that wasn't in my original guide. Original plan. Now I'm going to have to kind of improvise to get us back on to where I want us to be.

Joe Marcantano: Depending on the kind of depth and complexity of the prototype you're working on, that break of the prototype might be really disruptive and maybe you need to restart. Maybe it's okay to just jump right back in because you're testing, a prototype like email. Right. So people are used to kind of jumping in and out of it. But maybe you're gonna have to go back to screen number one and kind of walk through all of the screens to put that participant back in that same headspace.

Drew Freeman: A really, really excellent moderator will be able and comfortable just kind of going with the flow of where the session takes them. Okay, so with that idea in our back pocket, let's talk about kind of the first things you do when the participant actually walks in the room, be it virtual or physical.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. So this is something that really good detectives do and really good UX interviewers do. They establish expectations right away. You know, if I'm talking to, when I was still a detective, if I was talking to a witness or a suspect, I would sit down with them

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Joe Marcantano: and say, hey, look, you and I are gonna have a conversation. We are gonna figure out what happened, we'renna talk about what happened. I'm goingna ask you some questions, and we are going to establish what it is you saw or what it is you did. What I'm doing there is, number one, I'm revealing the agenda. But number two, I'm saying we a lot because it is not even in a good detective interview. It is not you versus me, even if that's the reality. It's we. We are going to find the answer. We are going to talk about what you did and what you saw, we are embarking on this together. We are on the same side. That's even more true in UX interviews. It is. We are trying to do this. We are going to test this prototype.

Drew Freeman: Absolutely. That is totally something I picked up on as you were talking about that. And it's a callback to what you talked about in part one of this. Making sure that, you are using the space, such that you don't accidentally set up an adversarial relationship. Your language can do that as well.

Joe Marcantano: For sure. If I walk into an interview room with a suspect and I point my finger in their face and I say, I know you did it, I'm goingna prove you did it, and blah, blah, blah, is that person gonna open up to me? Are they gonna tell me what happened? Are they gonna see me as someone that they can talk to? Of course not. But if I walk in and say, I know it's been a rough day, we need to talk, we will figure out what happened. Lets s you and I talk about what you did and what you saw, that is much more likely to elicit a, positive response.

Drew Freeman: I love it. Okay, so you've spent the requisite amount of time and the requisite care in setting the expectations for the session. What do you want us to think about next?

Joe Marcantano: This is something that detectives are really good at. And I think UX researchers, because of the kind of push to test more and more things in sessions, don't do as much. And that is take time to establish a rapport. When I was a detective, oftentimes I would sit down and I wouldn't even start talking about whatever it is that happened. We'd talk about sports, we'd talk about pets, we'd talk about whatever kind of came to mind or wherever the conversation went. And I would spend 10 or 15 minutes doing that. You know, it was really easy in playoff time because, for sports, because, you know, we could be like, hey man, are you watching the playoffs? Can you believe that? The Cardinals took that game last night? Or whatever. And we could spend 10 minutes talking about that, just kind of putting them at ease, establishing that rapport, reminding that person that I am a person as well and that I get excited about the same things they get excited about.

Drew Freeman: So how do you try to incorporate this rapport building into your UX interviews, given the push for fitting more topics into a set amount of time?

Joe Marcantano: To some degree, it just takes a little bit of putting your foot down with your stakeholders and saying, hey, we have to establish a rapport. It is going to drastically affect things. Now that rapport building time is not wasted time. It is not time that does not benefit the interview. Number one, you're building rapport so you're gonna get better answers. But depending on what you're testing, you can use that rapport building time to talk about the thing you're testing. If you're testing email, you can start chatting about, you know, what newsletters they're signed up for or what emails frustrate them or whatever. You can kind of build that in a little. The other thing is that it can really start to inform how you're going to style your interview. So some things that I'm thinking about when I'm building rapport is, is this person really talkative or are they more reserved? Is this someone who I'm going toa have to keep steering back to the tracks? Am I going toa be like the dentist pulling teeth to get information out of them? Do they directly answer questions? Do they dance around interviews? Do they naturally answer why? If I ask them, hey, do you check your email on your phone throughout the day? And they go yes, I da da da da da, versus no. And then they stop. So now I know I have to be prepared to poke at that to get them to elaborate, to prod and to see what's going on versus I can ask the question and then kind of sit back and start taking notes right away.

Drew Freeman: So I

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Drew Freeman: know not every researcher is great, at this kind of establishing rapport. Do you have any kind of go to topics or questions that you like to ask to help kick that process off? For me, one of my go tos, you know, like I said, I've done a lot of physical testing where I have to meet the person in a lobby or meet them at the entrance and walk them to our space. I'm spending that time asking, hey, how's your day going? You know, have you had any, did you have any issues getting here? Those are some example questions that I ask to kick off that rapport building.

Joe Marcantano: I do as well. I don't do as much in person testing as you do, so I think that the remote testing kind of makes that even easier. So the first thing that I will ask to kind of establish rapport if something hasn't naturally kind of come up is I'll ask them what part of the country or what part of the world they're in. And maybe they're in a city I recently visited or a city that's on my wish list or as we're recording this, most of LA is on fire. So if they were to say, oh, I'm outside la, I'd be like, how are things affecting you out there?

Drew Freeman: Are you okay?

Joe Marcantano: Are you al right? Can you see the fires from, like. I will just try to use the location to kind of spark a conversation if that fails. And it rarely does, but it happens. you know, being somebody that works from home and I have dogs, my camera is set up such that you can kind of see the dog tail wagging in the background.

Drew Freeman: Oh, my gosh. I've seen your dog's tail in so many meetings. It's great.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. And when I'm doing sessions, I use the blur background. I don't like the canvas backgrounds. I use the blur, but it does.

Drew Freeman: And you can still see the dust.

Joe Marcantano: You can kind of see it. And so I might intentionally call it out and be like, oh, sorry, my pup is needing attention right now. And most people, when they hear that will say, oh, what kind of dog do you have? How old is she? And this opens up a conversation on pets. It's not that, like, I mean, to a certain degree, of course, inna show off my dog, but it is more that I am using this as just a chance to talk about, talk to this person, person to person, and kind of build up a rapport in a relationship with them.

Drew Freeman: I mean, really, that answer is, why not both?

Joe Marcantano: Exactly. Right.

Drew Freeman: Okay, so after building a rapport, and again, spend more time building a rapport than you think you need to. It's that important. What's the next thing that you want us to think about?

Joe Marcantano: So I have a couple of things that I want to talk about. These are things that are going to be, Some of these are going to be obvious for UX folks, and some of them might not be. This, first one is a little more obvious. It's using silence. human beings, we are terrible at this. We are uncomfortable in silence. So one of the things that UX researchers need to do is start being comfortable with it, or at the very least, tolerating the uncomfortableness. Give people space at the end of their answers. Don't immediately feel the need to fill.

Drew Freeman: That silence, or even if you feel it, ignore it, fight it.

Joe Marcantano: When I first started doing UX interviews, I would give a three or a four count in my head before I spoke. I would force myself to allow for space for them to continue.

Drew Freeman: You started off this section by saying, you know, this one is a little bit more Obvious. And that may be so, but I do think that this is one of the things that most researchers can do a better job with. We might know that we need to do it, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

Joe Marcantano: Agreed. It's, it really does. Like I opened this with its kind of human nature. It really does go against what most people want to like, intrinsically do. Right when we are sitting with another person. There is kind of this natural need to reach out and communicate and fill that gap. It's awkward.

Drew Freeman: It's part of what a good conversation is built off of.

Joe Marcantano: Exactly one of the things that I started doing and this kind of came out of necessity for me, but now it's something I still do, is when I started doing UX research, I did not have a note taker. And so I would take my own notes and you know, at the time it was on a legal pad and I would scribble down stuff and I told people, hey, I may not respond right away. It's because I'm taking notes. It's not because I'm ignoring you now. Even

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Joe Marcantano: when I have note takers, I still take notes. And I use that as my excuse to allow for a few seconds of silence. And, very frequently people will detect that silence. And because they have this uncomfortableness with silence, they will fill that gap and they will further explain or further talk about whatever their answer was.

Drew Freeman: I still train people when I'm training folks to be moderators to you, if they're taking notes in person, even if you don't have anything to write down, doodle. The participant's not going to see it. They're not going to know that you're just doodling. Go ahead and doodle. You can ignore it when you're reviewing your notes later. If you're taking notes on a, computer, just go to a new line and just start typing gibberish again. You can delete that line later.

Joe Marcantano: The next thing I want to talk about, and this is something that is going to be a little counterintuitive, I think, for folks and that's asking why. And kind of my, my hot button take on this is we should not ask why. We want to know why. We want to understand why. But using the question of why can be kind of at best a little annoying and at worst can come off as confrontational.

Drew Freeman: I think about it as there, are better ways to ask why than the literal word why.

Joe Marcantano: Exactly. You know, we'we've talked about on, on this show before kind of unleashing our inner toddler and saying, why? Why, why? But think about how annoying that might be.

Drew Freeman: I was justnna say that's great to get information, but as a parent, think about how annoying that is or, you know, as someone who's not a parent. But here's, here's other toddlers doing that to parents. Think about how annoying that can be. Exactly how long does it take before someone just says, I don't know.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, or because I said so?

Drew Freeman: Yes, yes.

Joe Marcantano: The other thing that I don't know that everyone thinks about is if I'm a subject matter expert and I'm being called in for an interview because I am the expert on whatever that thing is, and then somebody asked me why. There are folks who will take that as a challenge to their knowledge, as a challenge to their authority as a subject matter expert. So I really do stress that researchers should ask why without using the word why.

Drew Freeman: Okay, so talk to me about some ways that you recommend folks do that. And let's start with the example that you just gave of, you know, you're bringing in an expert who might see asking why as a challenge or as confrontational to their knowledge.

Joe Marcantano: One of my favorite ways is to just say, can you tell me more about that? Or can you help me understand that?

Drew Freeman: I love those two phrases.

Joe Marcantano: those are my immediate go tos. I will sometimes say something like, I'm curious about how, whatever, or I'm curious about why. the other thing that I do is, you know, I might say what if? And then present the counterfactual. Now, it's important to note that I don't really care about what they would do in the counterfactual. I care about their framework for making the decision. So what I mean by that is really easy. Example. Somebody says, I love roast beef sandwiches, and I might respond with, well, what if they only had chicken sandwiches available? I don't care if they'd buy the chicken sandwich or if then they go to the salad. I care about the thought process of how they're going to make the decision. If they say something like, well, I take a look at what the other, other alternatives are, or I'd ask them if there's roast beef in the back. Whatever. Right? I care about how they are framing and thinking about the decision, not the actual counterfactual decision.

Drew Freeman: Another frame that I love to use, it's kind of similar to something that we've already talked about. But I love even if I do know exactly what the participant is talking about saying, I'm not sure I fully understand that. Can you, you know, can you explain that more to me? Can you tell me more? Because one, that gets them talking, but two, it makes them feel like an expert. And people like feeling like an expert.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, people. There's this kind of natural inclination people have, or most people have to help to be a helper. and if you can tap into that, this. Help me understand, help me get to where you're at. Most folks kind of naturally want to be there and they want to kind of reach down and help bring the next person up.

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Drew Freeman: I will give a word of caution on this technique, though. This can, if not done well, undercut your credibility as someone who knows what they're talking about. So you have to do it very carefully. This isn't something that I would recommend, a beginner necessarily try, but this is something that you can strive for, you can experiment with, and you can play with and figure out where that balance is for you, because that balance isn't going to be the same for everybody.

Joe Marcantano: Agreed. I would. Situationally, I would say that this works a lot better when you're talking to subject matter experts and you can kind of flat out say, hey, you're a doctor, I'm not. So I may ask you to elaborate on a couple of things, but if you're talking about testing email. Look, we all use email. Don't pretend that you don't know how to use email.

Drew Freeman: And even in that case, when, even in your example, when, I'm talking to a doctor, I might say, okay, so I understand the basic premise of what you're talking about, whatever that might be, but I'm getting a little lost in the details. Can you help me understand the details a little bit more?

Joe Marcantano: Exactly.

Drew Freeman: Because that helps me retain my credibility as someone who knows what this person is talking about while still letting them espouse their expertise and give me more information.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, precisely.

Drew Freeman: Okay, what's next? I know, I know from our notes that you want to talk about something that is really interesting to people who will watch, police procedural dramas, but doesn't, I know, doesn't actually happen that way in the real world.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about detecting deception. And this is something that we see. Like there's TV shows, right. Where they're like, oh, he scratched his nose, he's lying, or, oh, he shifted his weight, he's lying. That's not how that works. It just doesn't. Sweating that way. Hee.

Drew Freeman: Sweating. He must be lying. He's fidgety. He must be lying.

Joe Marcantano: He's nervous. Like, come on. He's being interviewed by a detective. Of course.

Drew Freeman: Of course he's nervous.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. So the thing that I will stress is that there is no single reliable indicator of deception. There is no one thing that you can look at and go, that person's not telling you the truth. There are things to watch for. And when you start getting combinations of these things, it means that might be something I should poke at.

Drew Freeman: Are these are indicators that should get your Spidey senses up and running.

Joe Marcantano: Exactly.

Drew Freeman: These are indicators that should make you think, I might need to spend more time here. These are not things that can tell you yes or no, are they lying?

Joe Marcantano: So some things to watch for. Watch for a dramatic change in posture. And I'm not talking about somebody shifting because they're uncomfortable or the seats weird or whatever. I'm talking about somebody who was like, leaned back and very disinterested. And then suddenly they lean forward and they're very attentive, or vice versa. Watch for or listen for a change in cadence. Somebody is always taking a beat before they start talking. And then, on one question, they take five or six beats or they take no beats, or maybe suddenly they speed up and they're talking really fast, or maybe suddenly they slow down. These are indicators that that person is thinking. Now, thinking doesn't necessarily mean deception. Thinking could mean they're trying to decide what to say or how to word it. It could also mean that they're trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth. That is possible, but it doesn't necessarily mean that thing.

Drew Freeman: Another thing that I'll add in this cadence section is maybe they switch from long, complex sentences to one word answers.

Joe Marcantano: Exactly. Yeah.

Drew Freeman: And again, this does not necessarily mean that they're lying. It just means that they're thinking. And as UX researchers, we want to know when people are thinking and we want to poke at those areas.

Joe Marcantano: Exactly.

Drew Freeman: It's simply just they're thinking about this. I want to know more about what they're thinking.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. the last thing that I have written down is a change in eye contact. Somebody's been making eye contact with you and they're suddenly avoiding it. Or somebody who's been avoiding eye contact or averting their gaze and now they're suddenly making eye contact. That kind of change usually indicates a shift in the framework, of their thinking. Does not necessarily mean deception. It just means something has changed and you might want to poke at it.

Drew Freeman: And again, this is not to say that Someone who doesn't make eye contact is lying.

Joe Marcantano: No, of course not.

Drew Freeman: There are people for whom eye contact is simply unbearably uncomfortable.

Joe Marcantano: Agreed. The final caveat I'll put on all of these things is

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Joe Marcantano: you. Everything I talked about here was a change. You should not be reading into the status quo, how they start. You should not be reading too deeply into somebody's cadence if it stays consistently, or somebody's posture if it stays consistent. I'm talking about changes in these things.

Drew Freeman: This is yet another reason why spending that time at the beginning to build rapport is so important.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, it helps you build a baseline. The final piece I'll say about all of these things is these are all kind of culturally dependent as well. You know, eye contact in some cultures is considered very disrespectful. In other cultures it's considered very respectful.

Drew Freeman: Absolutely. And these kinds of indicators or these kinds of things that should make your spidey senses tingle can be even more challenging or confounding if there isn't a shared culture between the participant and the moderator. Again, that is not to say that you should always or even try to match the culture, the background of the participant to the moderator. This is just to say this is messy and there's no one, there's no one path of truth.

Joe Marcantano: The final thing I'll talk about, on deception is it's probably pretty rare in a UX interview that somebody's going to outright lie to you, but there are instances where they may tell you less than the full truth, or maybe the answer is embarrassing and they don't want to reveal it. the most common example of this, of course, is like when you ask somebody, how often do you go to the gym? And they say, oh, I go five days a week. Except last week I had this thing. So I went four. And the week before I wasn't feeling well, so I went three. It's not that they're lying, it's that they shoot for five. Their aspirational goal is five, but in practice it's less. But they answer five because that's the goal.

Drew Freeman: Or asking someone, how many fruits and vegetables do you eat every day? Does someone really want to answer, oh, I don't really eat fruit or vegetables. No, of course they don't.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. Or how much ice cream do you eat in a week?

Drew Freeman: How much money do you spend on this thing that might be considered frivolous.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. So just kind of keep in mind that when you talk to participants and the subject either is or could be perceived as a little more sensitive, you might get answers that slightly skew to what the participant might perceive as less embarrassing.

Drew Freeman: And again, this is just yet more reason that it's important to set expectations like, I am not going to judge you. No one, no one on the product team is going to know who you are. Those kinds of things.

Joe Marcantano: And this kind of builds nicely into the next thing I want to talk about. So I call this creating social acceptance. Now, this term, social acceptance, is a term I have made up and kind of come up with. There is probably somebody out there who has really studied this thing and created a name for it. If you know that, please let us know, because I'd love to call it what it really is. But this is the idea of creating an understanding that what this person did or does is socially acceptable. So this is something that actually TV shows get really right about. Police interrogations or interviews. So if I am interviewing some. A husband in. In a domestic assault case, I might walk into that interview room and sit down and sigh or groan and go, man, my wife is really getting on me this week. Sorry if I seem a little off. I'm creating the perception that whatever it is this person has done is not going to appear taboo to me, that I am a kindred spirit. I am with them. You will see police shows do this all the time.

Drew Freeman: And Joe, I know for a fact that you said this when you were not married.

Joe Marcantano: Yes. Oh, 100% I have said this as a single man. I have walked into the rooms and said, man, she's really getting on me.

Drew Freeman: And you have said this when you were married and had the best week ever.

Joe Marcantano: Exly, your wife.

Drew Freeman: It doesn't matter.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, I might even have a.

Drew Freeman: Your experience is not the important part here.

Joe Marcantano: No. I might even have a female coworker walk into the room and berate me in front of him as if she were my boss. Just to create the acceptance, the idea that this suspect

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Joe Marcantano: and I are kindred spirits. So how do we translate this into UX work? One of the things that I do a lot is if somebody makes what they might consider to be an embarrassing mistake or they admit something and kind of. You kind of see that reaction in them when they're like, oh, I shouldn't have admitted that. That's embarrassing. I might immediately jump in and say, no, no, no, it's totally fine. I did the exact same thing the first time I went through this. Or I do the exact same thing. Or you are not the first person or the second to do this. Everyone has done this thus far.

Drew Freeman: Absolutely.

Joe Marcantano: All I'm trying to do is relieve that embarrassment so that I can then go in to ask them. Talk to me about how you got to the spot or why you did this.

Drew Freeman: So in some of the more kind of extreme cases where that phrase like, hey, you're not the first person to do this doesn't seem to be getting the participant over their potential embarrassment. I. A phrase that I love to have in my back pocket is, hey, this is not your mistake. It's the system's job to help guide you through what you need to do. This is because the system didn't do a good enough job. This is not on you. This is on the system.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. I think the big takeaway here is that if somebody gets embarrassed, that is not a moment to kind of let the interview shut down or move on. This is the moment.

Drew Freeman: Or to brush it under the rug.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah. This is the moment to let them know that it's cool. It's all right. It's not your fault. You're not the first one. I did it. Let's talk about how it happened so that I can fix it or I can help them fix it.

Drew Freeman: And what that does is move that from a potentially embarrassing situation to, oh, no, now this is a good thing so that we can fix it. So. So you could even say something like, I know. You know, okay, this is great. How did we get here? Like, okay, it's great that that didn't work for you. Tell me why that didn't work for you. or tell me. Tell me what led you down this path. Those kinds of questions, like, if you, as the researcher, say, oh, my God, this is. This is exactly the kind of thing that I want to hear. This is what I needed to see that immediately can. You know, that's another powerful tool to creating, as Joe calls it, social acceptance.

Joe Marcantano: I've got one more thing on the list, Drew.

Drew Freeman: Hit me with it.

Joe Marcantano: So this is something that I think UX researchers need to work on a little bit, and that's being observant of behaviors. I think it's really easy for a researcher to kind of lock in on the prototype if they're testing a prototype or if you're testing a physical thing, kind of watching how they interact with the thing as opposed to watching the participant. And, by that, I mean looking for things like wide eyes, g. Gasps, head nodding, shaking, or tilting. Maybe their hands go up in frustration, or maybe their hand goes to their mouth. These are all kind of nonverbal. Cues that maybe something didn't go as they expected. Now, like I talked about before, deception, these cues can kind of be culturally dependent. Right. So wide eyes might not always mean the same thing, but it's totally okay. And I think like encouraged for a good researcher to call this out, to say, you seemed a little shocked when you saw this. Can you walk me through what you were thinking? These kind of things, Number one, they provide a great spot in the transcript for you to kind of roll back to, but they also provide often really great quotes, really good one liners you can put in your deck.

Drew Freeman: So just a little bit of pushback that I'm going toa give on your example in particular, I think going from good to great in this situation, I might change from saying, I noticed you seemed a little shocked, which could be a little bit leading because maybe the participant wasn't shocked.

Joe Marcantano: That's true.

Drew Freeman: I noticed you, you know, I noticed you had a reaction or it seemed like you gasped or it seemed like, you know, I noticed that you were rubbing your temples. You know, whatever the. I noticed the objective action that you did. Can you tell me what led you to that?

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, I love that. That s. That's a really great, great next step to kind of level up this technique.

Drew Freeman: Okay, so I have had a really good time with this, with this little mini series here. I think they're, you know, it might not seem like it, but I think there is actually a lot that these two professions can learn from each other when it comes to a task that we both do

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Drew Freeman: that is similar, but we do in different ways. So let, I want you to kind of bring m it home with like, what are the things that you want our listeners to learn or to think about from this little minise series?

Joe Marcantano: The first thing I would love UX researchers to take away from this is number one, to start doing a little more of the things that detectives do that maybe don't kind of seem natural to UX researchers. And like one of those I talked about in part one was picking the right interviewer. I don't think that we do that enough.

Drew Freeman: I'll add prepping the space.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, I agree. The other big takeaway I would love for folks to have is, you know, I talked about this in part one. Everything that I talked about today is not intended to replace anything that you do. If you already have ways of asking why and they work, I'm not suggesting you replace your way with mine. All I am trying to do is provide people with a little bit extra, an extra tool they can put in their tool belt. And maybe that tool only comes out once or twice in their career, but that's once or twice where you got an answer where you wouldn't have otherwise. And so all I want to do is kind of broaden people's skill set just a little bit here.

Drew Freeman: I love it. Like I said, I've really enjoyed this series. Joe, thank you for kind of sharing some of your perspective and giving us some learnings that we might otherwise not get.

Joe Marcantano: Yeah, it was really fun for me and I'm always happy to share because then it certainly inspires some back and forth. And just like you and I did on that last one there, it gets me to think about how I can take these methods even further.

Drew Freeman: Okay, so again, thank you for joining us and listening to this episode. We really appreciate all of our listeners and the engagement and dedication that you all have to us. Please give us a like and a subscribe, maybe even a review on your podcast platform of choice. All of that helps us reach new listeners and spread the I hate to use this phrase, but spread the good word of UX further and further. Please send us your questions that you would like to hear us talk about and have an episode about to insideuxr@gmail.com and if you'd like to support the show, there's ways that you can do that. Like I said, ah, a podcast like a, subscribe a review are all super helpful. But if you'd like to, you know, send us a coffee, send us a virtual coffee. You can do that through the link in the show notes. I'm Drew Freeman.

Joe Marcantano: And I'm Joe Markantano and we'll.

Drew Freeman: See you next time.

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