TEDW: A Useful Framework for Turning Interviews into Conversations

1) Establish conversation

Being in charge of leading an interview can be quite stressful. Navigating through questions while choosing words carefully to not influence your interviewee is tough. The TEDW Framework comes in handy here. It enables researchers to dig deeper while at the same time build a natural conversation.

The goal of your research might be for your users to recall specific moments and tell you more about previous experiences. The framework supports this mindset.

2) Through following-up

An interview can quickly turn into a game of question & answer ping-pong. Which is not a conversation. When applying the TEDW technique, you are not asking questions directly but listening actively and following up on what your interviewee is telling you.

3) Don’t mistake opinions for facts

The biggest advantage of the TEDW framework is, it avoids one big pitfall: Mistaking opinions for facts. Opinions are hypothetical and not very reliable. If you ask questions like: “Do you like this idea?”, “Which solution do you prefer?”, “Would you buy this?”. These questions will solicit opinions. Yet, experience shows that people rarely do what they say.

Applying TEDW, you probe for hard facts. Instead of asking “What do you think the challenge is?” - you ask: “When was the last time you struggled with this particular challenge?” or even “When was the last time you googled a solution for this particular problem?”.

In short: TEDW is focusing on recalling reliable past data, as it reduces biases.

Source: Mistaking Opinions for Facts

Source: UX Collective