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Interview Guide

An editable interview guide is available here; download a version of this before proceeding.

Talking to real people will help us better understand our potential users and the problems they face in their efforts to meet our conservation targets. This guide is intended to help you plan and facilitate the interview. There are two sections to the interview: (1) understanding the persona and (2) understanding their problems. Within each section, a table with ‘question topics’ and ‘example questions’ is provided. Edit the example questions within each question topic prior to the interview. Use these questions as a guide, but feel free to improvise or skip questions as you see fit.

Discussion during the interview should relate to our area of interest (conservation targets), but should not be leading. People are generally agreeable—if you ask whether they think pollinators are important, they will probably say yes. Better to ask what their priorities are and see if they mention the problems or solutions you're testing. Towards the end of the interview, you may ask more leading questions to see why they did or did not mention our area of interest or value proposition in their earlier responses.

Before conducting the interview, you should (1) develop a persona based on available data sources and (2) brainstorm the types of problems they would face in relation to your program scope, vision or conservation targets. To ensure your personas are well-developed, make sure they meet the following criteria:

  • Real – based on actual evidence (secondary research, interviews, observations, collected data) Exact – includes sufficient detail that the persona ‘feels’ like a real person
  • Actionable – represents people that would actually use the MBHE
  • Clear – described well enough to be understood by others on the team
  • Testable – evidence can be collected to substantiate and improve the persona over time

Fill out the table in the interview guide for the persona to be interviewed to ensure your persona is ready and to brainstorm specific questions to ask.