Since commuters are a pretty big group to be covering by talking to a handful of people, we tested out several different interviewing strategies.
As we rode around on the public transportation here, we spoke to a few readers we saw on the buses about their experiences, and any troubles they may have had with reading on the go. While this gave some good feedback in regards to what some of the widespread complaints, these interviews were usually too short to go in depth.
We posted a short survey on an internet forum, and got several responses from there. There were also several interesting points brought up that we hadn't thought about. One of the respondents stated in her answers (view a few responses here) that she didn't read while riding the bus simply because she'd miss her stop.
To find commuters for more in-depth interviews than what we could get from people on the bus or from a forum survey, we decided to ask around at places where people are already at work. What better place than professor's offices on campus? Actually, the few professors who we found that could interview couldn't do so at times we could fit our schedules around, but we got a very useful piece of information. An assistant dean of SCS informed us that Hunt Library had just recently acquired an Amazon Kindle that would be available for students to check out. So we did!
Next, as one of us worked at the museum, we found some commuting employees there to interview.
Our interviewees knew that we were students doing research for a design project, but we did not mention the final objective of the project until later in the interview. We began our interview with basic questions (similar to those on the survey) about their reading habits and preferences, and asked them to describe their experiences with commuting to work. A couple of them launched into stories about their commutes, even without much prompting on our part.
After prying a bit more into their frustrations, we revealed to them that we were working to create an e-reader, and watched for their initial response. If it looked like they had no idea what we were talking about, which most did, we explained to them what an e-reader was, and they usually reported remembering hearing of it, but not knowing anything about it. We asked them their opinions of e-readers, and whether or not they'd ever consider purchasing one, and why.
Finally, we showed them the Amazon Kindle we obtained from Hunt Library, and handed it to them without much explanation, and observed and took notes as they tried to work it.