“pain points” aren’t necessarily that painful for people. The term satisficing,

Here’s some bad news: you won’t get the answer to your questions just by asking. If only you could simply utter the question and wait while the person gives you all the information you need, and then move on to the next question on your list.

What I’m calling interviewing is also referred to by other names: user research, site visits, contextual research, design research, and ethnography,

Don’t do this. Ask your question and let it stand. Be deliberate about this. To deal with your (potentially agonizing!) discomfort during the silence, give yourself something to do—slowly repeat “allow silence” as many times as it takes. Use this as a mantra to calm and clear your mind (at least for the moment). If the person can’t answer the quest

After you ask a question, be silent. This is tricky; you are speaking with someone you’ve never spoken to before. You

Let the participant know what to expect by giving a thumbnail outline of the process: “We’ll take about 90 minutes with you.

I privilege observing and participating over asking and telling. A successful field visit is one in which, at the end, the participant feels like they’ve made a new friend rather than like they’ve just been interviewed.

Insights don’t simply leap out at you. You need to work hard and dig for them, which takes planning and deliberation. Further complicating the scooping model is the fact that what the designers and engineers see as “pain points” aren’t necessarily that painful for people.

This looks more like a framework for how to be, rather than a list of what to do.