Disso Progress: Interviews

Hi everyone.
I know I said I would try to write about my dissertation progress every week but failed to do so. Since my last post back in May, I have been doing interviews with end-users (professional women) and paying customers (beauticians).

These interviews are a lot harder than I thought, the hardest part is not interviewing them or finding someone to interview (I thought finding someone would be the hardest) but its arranging a time and day. I email them back and forth a few times and sometimes it can even take a few days to get a day and time arranged. I haven't really been looking for beauticians to interview, I've been focusing on end-users more and fortunately one of the founders is looking beauticians for me as she wants to do the interview with me too. That's good, founders should listen to the feedback themselves. So far we've only interviewed 1 beautician and I've interviewed 8 end-users, all of which are either the founder's colleagues/ friends, my friends, and my supervisor's friends. Some of these interviews were done in person but some were over the phone/skype.

In the first couple of weeks many of the interviewees suggested doing it on the phone as it was more convenient for them. My supervisor said I should suggest travelling to their work place so then maybe they would be more willing to meet. So I did and yes I was able to meet with the rest in person.

So far from the interviews with the end-users, most of them have said they don't use mobile beauticians and wouldn't use them unless they know them or recommended by someone. This is because of trust, inviting someone to your house is quite personal so you have to trust that person. Most said they go to salon for the experience and want to feel pampered but if they come to your house you don't have the experience. Some said they would only book a mobile beautician for a special occasion like hen party.

As well as doing interviews, I've also sent out some surveys to some Facebook friends. I don't really like this but I guess this is another way to get feedback. I don't like it because you can't prompt them and they may not understand the question. Some people have skipped most of the important questions which is really annoying. I'm not sure if its because they don't understand it or they can't think of any answers. Last time I checked, 7 people did the survey and 5 people skipped majority of the questions! Not good.

Anyways, I got another 2 interviews this week one with an end-user and another with a beauticians. Thanks for reading.