Mohedas, I., & Daly, S. R., & Sienko, K. H., & Cravens, G. L., & Huynh, L. (2016, June), Evaluating best practices when interviewing stakeholders during design  Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26751

\bibitem{asee_peer_26751}
  Mohedas, I., \& Daly, S. R., \& Sienko, K. H., \& Cravens, G. L., \& Huynh, L. (2016, June), \emph{Evaluating best practices when interviewing stakeholders during design}
  Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana.
  10.18260/p.26751

Ibrahim Mohedas, Shanna R. Daly, Kathleen H. Sienko, Grace Louise Cravens, and Linh Huynh.  "Evaluating best practices when interviewing stakeholders during design".  2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2016.  https://peer.asee.org/26751 Internet.  17 May, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_26751}
  Ibrahim Mohedas, Shanna R. Daly, Kathleen H. Sienko, Grace Louise Cravens, and Linh Huynh.
  "Evaluating best practices when interviewing stakeholders during design".
  \emph{2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2016.
  https://peer.asee.org/26751 Internet.  17 May, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_26751
author = "Ibrahim Mohedas, Shanna R. Daly, Kathleen H. Sienko, Grace Louise Cravens, and Linh Huynh"
title = "Evaluating best practices when interviewing stakeholders during design"
booktitle = "2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2016"
month = "June"
address = "New Orleans, Louisiana"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/26751}
number = {10.18260/p.26751}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Engaging with stakeholders is necessary to design successful products and services. Emerging design processes, such as human-centered, user-centered, and participatory design, emphasize the use of stakeholders’ wants and needs to guide design decision making. These processes stand in contrast to more traditional technology-centered design approaches where designers make decisions that are then imposed on stakeholders. In engineering, human-centered design processes are becoming more ubiquitous, requiring students to effectively interact with stakeholders throughout the product development cycle. However, there is little research on how instructors can best evaluate these interactions to provide meaningful feedback to student designers. Existing research has demonstrated that while students might theoretically see the benefits of engaging actively with stakeholders, they encounter many practical challenges and may obtain only superficial benefits from the interactions This paper specifically focuses on the use of interviews as a source of stakeholder interaction during the design process; a crucial interaction methodology within the human-centered design philosophy.

The goal of this study was to differentiate high-performing and low-performing student designers as they interviewed stakeholders to elicit requirements. Stakeholder interview transcripts formed the basis of data for this analysis and were generated through an interactive design task in which students interviewed various stakeholders while developing product requirements.  Student designers were assessed through a deductive coding scheme developed via a systematic literature review of stakeholder interviewing techniques within an assortment of fields (e.g., software engineering, requirements engineering, business/innovation, participatory design, information/expert systems development, human-centered design, human-computer interaction, etc.). We sought to identify the strategies (as defined by the coding scheme) that designers were able to implement most successfully and least successfully. The deductive coding scheme was comprised of interview level strategies (e.g., develop a rapport with the stakeholder, be flexible and opportunistic, use a co-creative interview strategy, etc.) and question level strategies (e.g., use projective questioning techniques, introduce domain knowledge, encourage deep thinking, etc.) that have been documented in the literature as positive practices during stakeholder interviewing. 

Results indicate that within the sample of student designers, interview quality differed between students when assessed through the deductive coding scheme.  Additionally, preliminary results indicate that the greatest differences between high- and low-performing student design interviewers were: encouraging deep thinking, investigating the product context of use, seeking design relevant information, and verifying the conclusions drawn from interviews. The results reveal areas in which student designers are most proficient and point to areas in which they require the most support. Engineering education can specifically target these areas where students struggle through the development of design interview tools or targeted pedagogy.

AU  - Ibrahim Mohedas
AU  - Shanna R. Daly
AU  - Kathleen H. Sienko
AU  - Grace Louise Cravens
AU  - Linh Huynh
CY  - New Orleans, Louisiana
DA  - 2016/06/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Evaluating best practices when interviewing stakeholders during design
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/26751
DO  - 10.18260/p.26751
ER  -