Overall, the interviewing phase of this project was in my opinion the most informative so far. Now, I believe that is because we had a strong foundation to build from with regards to our secondary research and observation data. I think my strengths lend themselves towards research and analysis however, going out into the “field” and collecting the data helped me understand just how important the structure of the interview is. We had to revise our Interview guide a few times to get it to a point where we were listening to our interviewees tell stories as opposed to answering questions. In fact, I think we all did this very well (although I could use much more practice), and it seemed like we naturally moved through our question set.
After the interviews were complete, I found it extremely beneficial to go back and transcribe them because there were definitely things I missed listening to them live. The coding sheet also helped us comb through the data to look for insights into our research questions. This process was my favorite, and so much so i offered to transcribe another group member’s interview (they said it was great and could use the help) and very much liked gaining insights from another person. The other benefit was that I could see how my other group member interviewed their participant and that helped me in an area I would like to improve on as well. I definitely think this affirmed my preference towards analysis but I obviously see the value in a well executed interview.
The coding phase of this entire process went extremely well I thought. We formulated our coding sheet, coded our transcriptions, and then compiled the codes to then take a macro level view of the data set as a whole. This phase of the project is where we begin to narrow in on what exactly we have. As mentioned before, we can now triangulate in on an opportunity to explore that has been evident from all of our research this far. This is where the project starts to take form and it could not have gotten to this point without first setting the proper foundations with sound research. The only thing I think I would like to do more is actually more research, it’s easy to get some bias in such a small sample of data so I would love to have more data and to use more rigorous analysis methods to gain insights.