08 Mar The Value of In-Depth Interviews (IDIs)
Why In-Depth Interviews? It’s About Diving Deep.
Whenever you want an audience to buy into your ideas, your story, or your product, you need to know what they’re thinking vis-à-vis your presentation. We’ve found that one of the best ways to begin that process is a literal vis-à-vis: a face-to-face in-depth interview, or IDI.
Interviewing a single respondent, either in person or on the phone, allows us to do a “deep dive” into their thoughts and opinions about your message. We can gauge their general feelings toward your industry, test drive pieces of your message, find out which elements attract them or push them away and why, wordsmith with them, ask them what they’d like to hear, even (politely) challenge what they’re saying to test both the strength of your arguments and their objections. And then do it all over again with the next respondent—usually six to twelve interviews in all.
There are many advantages to using IDIs in your research. Having an uninterrupted, 45-60 minute conversation with a single person allows for deeper probing of his or her opinions, especially about sensitive topics. This is the forum for thoughtful introverts, who might sit in your focus group thinking thoughts that you need to hear—but won’t, because they’re not comfortable sharing in front of a larger group. (Introverts shop and vote, but quietly.) Groupthink, the disease of the focus group, doesn’t infect the IDI. You might detect important politically incorrect trends that, again, people might not express in front of others.
With the information gathered from these interviews we can help you craft your narrative with confidence, putting the pieces together in a script for a dial-test focus group, which is usually the next step in message refinement.
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