I will combine day 3 and 4 in this blog, but divide them in a way that you can read them in two sittings - if you wish.
Day 3: Difficulties are like a good bowl of fruit salad
I wasn't paired with Batman or Superman today :(
But I think Wonder Woman was a fantastic substitute. Wait, is there any Chinese females on the JLA? Not that I found, but that's okay, Wonder Woman is pretty awesome.
Along with having one of the hardest days (4 consecutive interviews followed by a 30 minute break, then another interview...) we had to try to get spontaneous interviews and also start transcribing material if we had down time. We were in crunch mode, which did bring up an interesting point.
Profiling: Assuming you have a short period of time, you've started asking people for interviews and all the people who have met your criteria for the research carry particular aspects (let's say... blonde hair), do you start profiling? Do you say, I'm only going to ask people with blonde hair? This was very interesting to me. On one side, you are losing out on the potential that a non-blonde fits your criteria; on the other side, you could be wasting time by using the whole pool of potential people - sometimes patterns fit. What do you do?
- - The situation was quite interesting. My partner had recommended that we sit in a cafe and see if we can spot someone that could fit our criteria (born and raised in york). I noticed 3 potential areas: a group of 4 girls, a group of 3 girls and 1 guy, and a Chinese guy sitting alone studying. I suggested that we talk to the Chinese boy, but my partner was confident that the target was not within our criteria. I knew she was right, but it would be great if he wasn't! It would have been good for the project. But, the upside was that there was another table beside him, and I thought that it would great if I was loud enough so the other table could eavesdrop. The sad part was that the target was not in our criteria, but the plus side was that the table beside him did listen in and one of them was within the criteria. So, my partner was right, but if I didn't ask we wouldn't have gotten the other interview. Interesting situation.
At the end of the day, we celebrated the birthday of my old partner (code named Batman). It was fun. Food, drinks (none for me because I don't drink), and music. It was a lot of fun!
Day 4: The very reason teams should be mixed genders
I was paired with Wonder Woman again, and it was perfect for today. I recommend that majority of the time, the teams should have both genders - especially if you have both genders as interviewees for the day.
Our first interviewee, a female, was very formal with me and wouldn't give details for anything. I ended up tapping my partner's leg and she jumped in. All of sudden the interviewee was very relaxed and told great stories. However, whenever I laughed or entered her sights again, she got more tensed and formal. It was interesting.
To top that off, a later male interviewee would not look at my partner. He ended up completely shifting his body towards me, and it looked like he tried his best to block her out of sight. It was interesting.
Anyway, it's past midnight and in this whole trip I think I've slept near 20 hours (that's about 4 hours a day...). Au revoir à tous!
"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, thought." - J.D. Salinger
No comments:
Post a Comment