Constructing a Successful Interview

In the reading, it discussed the correct strategies of asking and responding to an interview in order to get as much out of it as possible. The reading referred to this as learning to ask and learning to listen during an interview. It explained the importance of structuralism and flexibly, the process of having predetermined questions before the interview and the ability to be flexible and follow your informant's lead. You always need to be aware and expect the unexpected.

There are two different kinds of questions to be asked during interviews, open and closed. Open questions are more conversational and let the informant know your interested in what they are saying which ultimately makes them more comfortable. Closed questions are questions that require a little research to be done allowing you to ask the right questions in the interview. The reading also talked about how to listen intently during an interview. Using body language (eye contact, no fiddling) and not interrupting while the informant is talking lets them know you are encouraging and acknowledging their responses and interested in what they are saying.

The reading also displayed a few examples of good interview questions and answers and how to change them to essay format, also known as oral histories. It explained how to balance the informants voice and the interviewer's descriptions. You want to use many details and keep yourself in the background, doing this will allow the informant to tell their story.

Interview

In the interview of the Hanover Bowladrome by Nicole Williams, she made it more than just an interview on a piece of paper, she created a story using the form of interviewing. She provided much useful information about her site but also incorporated other background information about her topic that may be interesting for the readers to begin her paper. She also found a way of balancing out the different people she chose to talk to. She separated it by groups almost, for example she talked to someone in the woman's league, a person from the men's league, the owner of the bowling alley, and a visitor just simply bowling for fun. This gave different views and perspectives of the bowling alley and added contrast to her paper. She applied much detail in her descriptions of the people she observed and talked to and she used direct quotes from her interview in her paper. She talked about the different leagues within the alley, how some play for fun and others for competition, how long they have been interested in the aspect of bowling, and how for some,it is a fun tradition that runs in the family. This paper portrayed a perfect example of how to create a good paper based on interviewing and will be very helpful in the writing of my future interview ethnography.


Attached is a link I found on tips for writing a good interview essay. I felt it had good points and would help in the beginning process of the interview ethnography.
http://www.customwritten.com/Writing/interview-essay.html

Group Presentation

For my presentation, my group's desired topic is design principle/document design. Although we just started working on it in class today, I feel we made good progress towards beginning the presentation. In class, we researched in the books offered and also found some websites online with very useful information for our specific topic. After doing a little research, we decided we would divide up the topic so we could do our own further research at home. After doing so, we would bring back our own results and put the entire power point together as a group in class on Friday.
The more narrow topic I chose inside of my broader topic is the Do's and Don'ts in document design. I collected and copied down helpful notes for my part of the presentation so I am prepared to put the final power point together with my group. All we need to do now is figure out what other element we can do for our presentation to add to the power point. So far, I feel confident in the work of my group and myself for this presentation and I think we will be right on task for our group presentation on design principle/document design this coming Monday.

Attached is a link for one of the useful websites we found on our topic.
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/designprinciples/Principles_of_Design.htm

Midterm Portfolio

http://shaelynsengl-102portfolio.weebly.com/index.html