Interviewing is easy to do badly. where ‘bad’ means you are either altering the player’s mental model by revealing information too early, or not fully exploring the model they have constructed.

Here’s a recap of the main points which should help you to reliably explore a player’s mental model.

[ ] Your goal as the interviewer is to try to reconstruct the player's mental model - how they think the game works.

[ ] Start broad - assess goals, roles, and rules. This will not only assess their knowledge of the game, but also expose a lot of the game’s language which you can use to bridge between questions.

[ ] Use Bridging to move between your interview questions. Use active listening to fully understand what they are saying, potentially taking the conversation in unforeseen directions.

[ ] When investigating an issue, try to get to the source of the issue. Is it Awareness, Understanding, or Execution that's the underlying issue?

[ ] Don't correct the player if they say something incorrect, you don't want them updating their mental model mid-interview.

[ ] Don't reveal Information - don’t mention the name or presence of any features/characters etc unless the player does so first.

Key Takeaway

The methods discussed here have tried to provide a reliable and repeatable process for interviewing. However, interviewing is as much an art as a science, and you may find that some on your team are better at doing this than others. Experiment by allowing everyone on the team the chance to interview, and give feedback to each other. It won’t be perfect first time, allow ample time to practice this craft.

Next: Step 5. Sensemaking > 53. Sensemaking