Take verbatim notes during interviews

While taking notes during interviews, capture verbatim notes rather than interpretations or summaries. This will help prevent early synthesis or introduce biases. Verbatim notes (and quotes) add reliability to the gathered information, and help others understand the context and mood in which things were said.

This is especially helpful for User interviews, as interpretations introduce bias into the notes and could be different from other researcher's interpretations.

When capturing contextual cues or emotion (your interpretation), add [brackets] around them to keep them separate from quotes and verbatim notes.

Instead of full quotes, you can also capture first-person person notes like “love reading, journal every day” rather than, “I love reading, and I journal every day.”

Lack of verbatim notes is common when sales and support teams record customer feedback. Instead of capturing customer feedback as the customer states it, team members record their own summary of what they think the right solution would be. This introduces a significant amount of bias and prevents product teams and researchers from understanding the context and language customers actually have.

An exception to this if the interview is recorded. By capturing synthesized notes, you can be more proactive in asking questions to fill gaps, and use the recording later to capture key verbatim notes.

Erika Spear. “Process: Note Taking in User Interviews.” Almanac, 21 July 2020, almanac.io/docs/process-note-taking-in-user-interviews-1a070ced505eca10b99a9391dbc4c464. Accessed 17 Mar. 2021.‌

Ryan Sibley. “Tips for Capturing the Best Data from User Interviews.” 18F, 9 Feb. 2016, 18f.gsa.gov/2016/02/09/tips-for-capturing-the-best-data-from-user-interviews/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.

Kanhika Nikam. “Design Research: How to Effectively Capture Your Interviews with Note-Taking.” Springload, 8 Sept. 2020, www.springload.co.nz/blog/design-research-how-effectively-capture-your-interviews-note-taking/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.