Interviewing
I often interview clients, stakeholders and users when performing research for my design projects. I enjoy talking to people, so this is actually one of my favorite parts of being an experience designer. It’s doubly rewarding when I can take what they tell me and build features that directly address their frustrations. I’ve also become accustomed to recording my conversations for later review. It’s helpful and keeps me from furiously taking notes instead of focusing on the conversation. I usually hold onto my recordings for reference or transcription. I hate listening to them and often I openly apologize to the transcriptionist.
Yesterday I recorded my first journalistic interview for production. You can check it out here. I have to say that it was a lot of fun and after listening to the track several million times during editing, I’m almost okay with hearing my own voice. It was a good experience and I’m looking forward to doing a handful more before and during SXSW Interactive.
Along the way I learned a few things about editing that I would like to share.
- Bundled into Garage Band’s sleek interface is a set of tools far more robust that I anticipated. I was particularly impressed with the tools for removing background noise and its wide library of equalizer settings and background music.
- It’s really important when placing the spoken word atop music to make sure the voice is heard. That may sound obvious, but you should take time to test it out. I previewed my first take with headphones, but when I exported the audio file and listened to it via my MacBook speakers all I could hear was the background music.
- Think like a musician. After making the first cut, I went back into GarageBand to make a template for future podcast episodes. After a few minutes, I realized that I was trying to place clips into the mix using the seconds as a ruler instead of measures. While you wouldn’t think that this is useful go ahead and try starting a voice over on the off beat. You’ll hear what I’m talking about.
- Avoid over-used stock music. Of course, I’m guilty of this one. I used GarageBand’s “Fifth Avenue Stroll” for my background track, but along the way I discovered “Pendulum.” I’ve heard this track used in three advertisements already, starting with Phi Mu Alpha’s Life Loyal Sinfonian site. I later heard it more subtly on a television advertisement for lice shampoo, then again at the Triangle ADDY awards last week. I think the PMA site won an award as well, but I can’t find a source to confirm that right now. I’m glad this is such a popular track, but I’m declaring it useless. In fact, I almost used it just to make a point.
Thanks for checking out my first episode and any comments are welcome.
