Interviewee:
Title:
Institution:
Interviewers:
Place:
Date & time:
0. General things to look out for during the interview
- Work processes
- Tools used (OCR/digitizing software, scanning hardware, etc.)
- Output generated (raw text, PDF document, etc.)
- Stakeholders (esp. other possible interviewees)
- Pain points & frustrations
1. Getting started
Introduce the team and explain why you're there. Give a brief overview of the interview session, and assure him or her that they don't need to answer any questions they might feel uncomfortable in answering.
2. Demographics, context, icebreakers
- Can you tell us a little bit about [institution]? How many people does it have? How is it structured?
- Tell us about the human resources you have in-house, their skills, responsibilities, etc.?
- How long have you been at [institution]?
- What are your roles and responsibilities?
- What other departments or institutions do you work with closely?
- What kinds of activities do you typically use a computer for?
- Any favorite applications or websites? Why?
- Any you don't like? Why?
3. Main interview
- What kinds of material do you digitize? (e.g., books, documents, etc.)
- Do you deal with rare materials? (i.e., materials that require special handling)
- How does a scanner go about starting a scanning task? How do they organize themselves and approach the task?
Workflow
Let's talk about the workflow...
- Can you talk about the workflow for digitizing an individual book?
- What happens on a page-to-page basis?
- Do the scanners need to validate the scans? (image quality assurance)
- Pain points: what is disliked most (or most frustrating) about the scanning process?
- How often do pages need to be re-scanned, and why?
- Where and how does page arrangement, organization, changes (additions/deletions), etc. happen?
- Can you talk about the workflow for digitizing an archive/library?
- Could you speak about the division of the workflow between Toronto and San Francisco?
- Inefficiencies: What takes the most time? (What stage of the workflow?)
Hardware/Software
- What sort of equipment/software do you use to digitize books?
- Did the IA build it, did they contract a company to custom build it, or did they use a pre-packaged third-party solution?
- Any general frustrations with the tool?
- How does the product help/hinder your work flow?
- What does the software do automatically that helps your work? What do you wish it did automatically?
- Are there any cases where automation has made your work harder?
- What kind of batch operations are available to a scanner? Do these features help?
- How do you work around problems?
- What are the outputs of the Toronto site?
- What are the final document outputs like?
- Does your solution do layout analysis and attend to text flow?
5. Wrap-up
Thank the individual for their time.
Ask if it would be OK to contact them with follow-up questions and/or design review as we move through the project.