Digital experiences, such as websites and apps, are assets to a company as they play a significant role in the customer journey. The company’s marketing department usually manages these digital properties, and many designers make the mistake of deeming other stakeholders insignificant to have a say in the UX design process.
Key stakeholders have much to contribute to the design process. If they are appropriately interviewed, their suggestions can make the project successful.
As a UX designer, you will be surprised to learn what information stakeholders think is obvious and decide not to say explicitly. Conducting stakeholder interviews removes this ambiguity, allowing you to learn nuances, uncover details, and bring their thoughts to paper.
More importantly, since stakeholders will approve the final project, knowing their opinions and insights is inevitable.
Who are the Stakeholders?
As the name implies, “Stakeholders” have a stake in the project you’re trying to succeed at. Meeting their expectations and satisfaction should be the utmost priority.
They can be anyone within and outside the organization who can offer valuable advice and has something to gain from the product’s success, directly or indirectly. They broadly fall into two categories:
- Internal Stakeholders:
Team members within the organization who are directly linked to the project’s success, such as executives, product designers, managers, and developers. - External Stakeholders:
People outside the organization who are affected by the project’s success, such as users, clients, and customers.
What is a Stakeholder Interview?
A Stakeholder interview is a conversation a UX designer has with stakeholders about the design process to understand their expectations, success metrics, insights, and project goals.
The information collected during these conversations will help designers to create a smooth design process.
Typically, these interviews take place in the initial stages of project development. However, the key is to use them at frequent checkpoints, even during the design process, to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Importance of Stakeholder Interview in UX Design
Do you need some incentive to conduct those stakeholder interviews? Let’s give you some:
To understand what is standing between business goals and user needs
Stakeholder interviews help discover the alignment between business goals and user needs, and UX designers must fulfil both. Stakeholders are the source of insights into obstacles that may arise in the designing process, and then the designer must find ways to overcome those obstacles.
Understanding user requirements from the stakeholders’ point of view can help designers solve the correct problems rather than randomly guessing what the problem is. A good UX designer can also identify user needs that have not crossed the stakeholders’ minds during the interview.
Identify project scope and constraints.
Interviews with stakeholders provide clarity and context for setting the proper scope of the project. Do they require a website design or just UI/UX writing? Clearly define what the stakeholders want you to do.
Constraints in a UX design project may include a tight budget, short deadlines, technological limitations, and organizational policies. Knowledge of these constraints beforehand assists in setting realistic goals and mitigation strategies while effectively managing whatever resources are available.
Understanding stakeholders’ varied visions, not just in terms of success metrics but also their overall goals for the project, can help form a vision that everyone agrees on.
Build stakeholder support
You are in a better position if the stakeholders feel involved in the design process. Including them makes them root for the project’s success and contribute positively, whether assisting in overcoming challenges or supplying necessary resources.
Building stakeholder support earns you honest feedback, collaboration, trust, and buy-in, which is crucial to the project’s success.
To manage expectations and risk
Understanding stakeholders’ expectations and the possible risks of conflicts and misunderstandings is essential for smooth completion and timely project delivery.
Sure, documents are exchanged, and casual meetings are held with the project manager and the company’s marketing department. Still, it might be insufficient as important insights might be lost.
A company has different stakeholders, and they may all have different outlooks regarding expectations and risks for the project. One-on-one conversations will help to manage such different perspectives and opinions.
Stakeholders invest their time and effort in researching and working on the project before they finally contact designers. Designers should take advantage of this research to create mitigation strategies for any potential risks that may arise.
Potential Challenges of Conducting Stakeholder Interviews
All fruitful things come with challenges, and so do conducting stakeholder interviews. Here’s a heads-up for the challenges you might face.
It takes time
It’s a well-known fact that interviews are time-consuming. They require scheduling, coordination, managing the availability of both parties involved, aligning them with project timelines, and being present during the interviews.
However, the results of these interviews are also highly enlightening for the whole process, as they shape the direction to take.
Solution:
After gauging the time a particular project will take, decide that you will only take a definite number of interviews in the time available and no more than that.
Organizational politics
Working with some organizations involves an entirely different concern: politics within the organization. Internal organizational politics can hamper stakeholders’ outlook, and navigating such situations requires a different sort of intelligence and sensitivity.
Many decision-makers within an organization have different expectations and priorities, and it requires tactfulness to ensure harmony among them while dealing with disparate data and opinions.
Solution:
Reduce stakeholder conflict by ensuring that final decisions are transparent and justified.
Conflict of priorities
A single organization may have multiple stakeholders with conflicting priorities. As a designer, you might think something is good for the project, but the stakeholders disagree and vice versa.
It can be difficult to manage these conflicts among diverse minds and find a sweet spot, a common ground where goals are aligned and ready to move in the right direction.
Solution:
Effective communication and negotiation skills can reconcile different priorities that may be personal, departmental, and role-based. This will help you ace stakeholder management.
Determining key stakeholders
Multiple stakeholder brings different priorities and expectations. Sometimes, it becomes difficult for the designer to decide which stakeholder to listen to. Typically, stakeholders are of three types, which include:
- Key stakeholders: Leaders who execute organisational actions have the highest authority.
- Primary stakeholders: They are groups or individuals directly affected by the project, such as end users and other organisational employees.
- Secondary stakeholders: People playing a supportive role have the most minor influence on the project.
Solution:
Identify stakeholders and prioritize them by their impact, interest, and power on the project’s success. Dividing the stakeholders into the three categories mentioned above can be the first step.
Then, there should be different ways of managing these stakeholders. You should prioritize key stakeholders, as they usually hold resources and will give the last nod to the project.
Planning the Interview
Let’s come to the main thing now. This section divides the process into three categories: Pre-interview, Interview, and Post-Interview. Let’s dissect it properly and learn what should be done at each stage.
Pre-Interview
Decide objectives:
Any UX project starts with establishing clear objectives for the stakeholder interview; objectives define what you want to know from them. Take inspiration from the below-mentioned objectives to make sure you get the information you need at the end of the interview:
- To recognise future conflicts and hurdles
- To figure out limitations, if there are any, such as technological, financial and time limitations
- To learn about previous research and explorations done by stakeholders
- To figure out the competitors. Strategies employed and the shortcomings faced by them
- To learn the preferred communication channels of each stakeholder
- To build rapport and a feedback loop
- To outline a shared definition of the success of the project
Use these objectives as a checklist during the interview. Prepare for a successful interview while keeping these objectives as a north star to guide you.
List down questions:
Knowing what you want to ask during the interview is considered good practice, so you need to research and prepare your questions beforehand. Below, we have a list of questions that will cover a lot of information you will need in the UX design process: you can directly quote us on these.
- What are your expectations from this project in the short and long term?
- What is the job profile of the stakeholder in the organisation?
- Who are the customers/end users?
- Are there limitations like budget and time constraints? If yes, then what kind?
- Are there any problems with the product?
- Who are the major competitors in the market?
- What are the success metrics used by stakeholders?
- What are the pain points and the issues that this project solves?
- Have you received a particular user complaint about this product that you want to address in the UX design?
- What are the resources available?
- Who will be the final approver of this project?
- Are there any other stakeholders that we should know about?
Don’t limit yourself to these questions; develop more that fit your information needs. Also, remember that follow-up questions are bound to occur when you’re taking the interview; feel free to ask those questions and clear your queries at that moment. You should ask open-ended questions to incite stakeholders to give detailed answers.
Identify the tools and technology you will utilise:
You might think a pen, paper, and a medium to communicate are good enough tools to start, but why do we have to settle for “good enough”? Utilize the technology that’s available to you.
For Instance, tools like FigJam and Miro have interview templates you can use to conduct interviews. These software programs help you record organized notes for clarity, and you can add questions, answers or any other helpful information with these.
Zoom allows you to record meetings, and you can later use tools like Dovetail, Optimal Workshop, and Aurelius to transcribe those meetings and tag specific quotes within the transcribed scripts. You can later utilise these highlighted quotes for research.
Schedule the interview:
Let’s cut to the chase and schedule the interview. Ask the respective stakeholders about their preferred communication channels: emails, Google Meet, Zoom, instant messaging, or in-person meetings.
What’s the right time to conduct the interviews? Interviews are usually conducted at the beginning of the project, but the process does not end there, as there are no hard and fast rules about this. Since design is not a linear process, there is bound to be a back-and-forth with the stakeholders. Choose what frequency of interviews works for you and them.
If you have the luxury of time, you can do a few rounds of these interviews, but if there’s a time crunch, you will have to get as much information as you need in less time.
Interview
Introduce yourself and create understanding:
Without rushing, introduce yourself, express your intentions regarding the interview, and give a project overview.
Be a great listener and think of yourself as if you know nothing. Sometimes, stakeholders also have little to no context about the project. In this case, try to collaborate with them to develop a plan.
Build a rapport with them through open and transparent communication, and make them feel heard. Acknowledge their previous research and knowledge.
Conduct interviews:
The interview environment should be informal (but professional) and relaxed to help break the ice. Some stakeholders will be upfront about sharing their knowledge, but with others, you may need to use prompts like “Tell me more about that?” “Can you give me an example for that?” and “How do you feel about that?”
Show basic interview etiquette, such as making eye contact, being empathetic, open-mindedness, and following nonverbal cues. End the interview by thanking stakeholders for their time.
Document requirements and answers:
First and foremost, get their permission to record the interview for later research purposes. If you forget to take notes during the interview, you can always use the transcribed script to take notes later for analysing data.
Post Interview
Analyse response:
Compile the information and data from the interview and highlight significant themes, suggestions, and concerns above and beyond surface-level knowledge. Organise your notes and findings in different categories, such as:
- Long term goals
- Short term goals
- Fears
- Success metrics
- Conflict
- Limitations
- Solutions
- Unique selling points
Share the information with your team and discuss the findings. Finally, look at the interview process from a bird’s-eye perspective and notice what can be improved in future interviews.
Follow-up for clarification:
If you find new information or doubts after the analysis, don’t hesitate to organise a follow-up session for clarification. Clear the ambiguity and ask more explicit questions.
Make an action plan:
Now is the time to create a clear roadmap using all the analysis and insights. Integrate insights into the project and develop an action plan.
Execute the suggestions, needs, and feedback made by the stakeholders. Make a timeline for each step so that you complete the project on time.
Determine whether the data gained from the interview aligns with the objectives that were initially discussed in the interview. If it differs from the objectives, enlighten stakeholders with this information.
Best Practices and Tips for the Interview
Here, we mention some of the best practices and tips that you may overlook but are significant in the interview process.
Manage the time during the interview.
Make a rough plan that allocates time for each discussion you want to have with the interviewee. Keep introductions brief, watch the clock, and avoid detaining yourself and stakeholders from the conversation.
Build rapport with stakeholders.
Earn their trust and buy-in. It will be easy and interesting to work with stakeholders who have a say in the project and are rooting for your success. Give them a reason to believe in you.
Overcome language barriers
Use jargon-free language for clear understanding. You can always go back to transcripts to get the meaning of something you didn’t understand. If the stakeholders speak a different language than yours, consider having an interpreter in the interview. Use visual aids such as charts, tables, and notes to facilitate further communication.
Ensure confidentiality and data privacy.
Plainly state confidentiality measures to inform stakeholders that the information they share will be used in the design process. Keep them anonymous if they don’t want to be named for the information.
Give room for expression.
Create a nonjudgmental environment for free expression and encourage different opinions. Allow them to form their thoughts into a clear and comprehensive suggestion.
Wrapping Up
Are you convinced that stakeholder interviews can’t be missed in a UX design project? However, the interviews can be useless if you don’t perform a meticulous analysis and breakdown of the information afterwards.
Now, go and have a successful stakeholder interview, which will save you hours of research. At Yellow Slice, we understand the importance of stakeholder interviews in the design process. If you’re looking for design services, head to Yellow Slice’s website and experience how we use the knowledge of stakeholders to make your project a success.
FAQs About Stakeholder Interview
1. How do I manage a stakeholder who’s difficult to talk to in an interview?
Some stakeholders are difficult to navigate in a conversation. Usually, there are three types of stakeholders: key, primary, and secondary. If the tricky stakeholder falls under the category of key and primary, then you will need to work your way through them. Be calmer, try to be rational, understand where they are coming from, show evidence of your excellent work, and, in the end, be firm if necessary.
2. What are some essential questions to ask during a stakeholder interview as a UX designer?
Essential questions that you can’t miss in a stakeholder interview as a UX designer include:
- Who are the major competitors?
- Are there any technological limitations?
- Who are the users?
- Why is the project important?
- What are your expectations for the user experience? and
- What are your goals for this project?
3. Can I skip conducting a stakeholder interview in a UX design project?
No, you can’t skip an interview with the stakeholders as part of the UX design process. They are extremely helpful in setting expectations, setting clear priorities, building rapport, learning possible obstacles, and understanding success metrics. All of these facts eventually decide the success of the UX design project. You may assume the outlook of stakeholders, but you will be surprised to know how differently stakeholders think at times.
