Life Interview Talk Experiment
When did you lastly have a talk about your life?
In the world of complexity, we have walked out of standardized ways. Even though an applicant is female, she can apply to law school. Although we can’t meet more than five people(In Korea, private gatherings of five or more people have been prohibited.), we plan to meet online and have a beer party. All changes have made each person’s story valuable. All stories have become others’ reference to make breakthrough in our lives.
If you have tried a few talks before, you may know that it’s much easier if you have enough information. It sounds natural. But how about talk with someone you don’t know well? If you need some stories from the person, then what will you do?
Li:Fe Lab faced the situation. We needed individual stories from young adults in their 20s. We had hard time understanding them before interviews because they didn’t have careers yet and upload their deep stories online(they usually posted superficially joyful photos when they were happy). Plus, since our topic was growing pains, we couldn’t predict their stories on our own, which got them hurt. To solve these issues, we designed an interview procedure.
An Interviewer as well as Interviewee
I designed an experiment: do some research on an person in his or her 20s and share useful information with teammates. read info that teammates uploaded. then ask a few questions of the chosen person to other teammates as an interviewer. like other teammates, anyone can be an interviewee to answer questions of the person who you don’t choose and just read some info about.
Collection of Good examples of Interviewer
Next time, the other teammate designed another experiment: choose meaningful references to us and share some stories of them. introduce chosen interviewers to teammates. then other teammates ask questions to learn from those models. The result was we dreamed of interviewers who put themselves down and continued the conversation smoothly so that all participants in our interview recognized what we want to talk about was important.
Give, and then Take
Everyone knows an easy and life rule: Give and Take. But there are few people who know its order. First Give and then Take! Li:Fe Lab already knew the order. Thus I put my story first in a pre-interview survey. For example, asking an interviewee’s name, I told my name Bora(it means Purple in Korea) and its reason why I prefer to be called Bora. Plus, I led a few answers with my answers with stories. To ask the interviewee’s dream, I explained my life-dream first: to be ‘a person who grows with others.’ Likewise, my teammate and I always told our stories first and then listen to our interviewee’s talk in the interview.
Unexpected Pop-up activity
Most interviews start and end via talk. But Li:Fe Lab designed some interview device to emphasize with interviewees. Our first step was ‘drawing our face.’ Preparation I asked in advance was drawing only face with no color and painting only one spot of the face. This activity made us
- introduce each other in a new and interesting way
- read interviewees’ perception of themselves
- smoothen atmosphere and lower talk barrier
- use this image to show each other in our own ways as much as we want
Observation during talk
Every interview has its interviewee and interviewer. Then who can discern fairly whether the interview goes well? To do so, Li:Fe Lab set one and only one crucial responsibility: Observer. One member observed our interview. Her role was to read nonverbal cues and read between the lines. With her role, she explained us how the interview was objectively. Besides, she delivered her opinion via private and everyone chat, which filled up some gaps interviewers didn’t notice.
Big and Open Questions
Is there anything else you want to tell us? I asked right before the end of interview. After one hour of talk, this question became lubricant. Our interviewee told insightful narratives in her life. She told her weakness, the impact of it, and her game changer. If you don’t ask any questions at the end of interview even though you already built deep rapport for a few hours, you will regret losing hearty insight.
After this procedure above, the interviewee said: I like to talk about value, but it’s not easy to talk about it. It’s a story that we can only talk about when enough prepared. It was a good time for me because I was able to think about things that I’ve forgotten and things. Thank you.
Through the Li:Fe Lab interview talk, I’ve learned that anyone wants to share stories on their lives’ trajectories. Even if the trajectories have fluctuated a lot. By confessing our life story at first as an interviewer and interviewee, we feel awkward, which leads us to think deeply on our painful moments for the first time. It is literally difficult because we have never tried before. However, overcome the moment. Then the hard moment turns out to be a whole new tipping point to embrace not good and week aspects of myself, but variety of myself.
