I had a chance to put into practice a concept from the course. Here is my experience:

I had a chance to put into practice a concept from the course. Here is my experience:

    When my team chose two research instruments for our project, we chose to conduct interviews and surveys. I ended up conducting the interview along with another group member. To add some context, our group was researching how environmental awareness impacted consumer purchasing. We interviewed a UofT employee and they had a really interesting perspective.
    Overall, we did a good job creating unbiased questions and we had a good ordering of questions to avoid bias. This was reflected in the interview where the interviewee appeared to answer all questions honestly. Now I have conducted interviews before but not to this rigor. Given that the interview lasted approximately twenty minutes, it was tough not showing any sort of emotion as to avoid bias. Nonetheless, I did the best I could, and conducted the interview while my other group member wrote down the responses. The interviewee elaborated much more than I expected on our questions. The interviewee seemed relaxed and engaged throughout the whole interview as well. By nature of an interview, my other group member and I had several follow up questions for the interviewee that also proved insightful.
    Going into the interview, I wasn't expecting to get such detailed responses, nor did I expect to get such informed responses. For instance, we had questions in relation to government regulating people's hot showers and a common theme for his responses focused on providing education rather than regulation. This was a point we had not thought of which really impacted our approach going forward.
    What I took away from the interview was more than just the interviewee's responses. This was the first "real" interview I have conducted. I learned just as much about the interview process as I did about our problem space.