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Interview Guide

Framing

Framing is the foundation of your AI-assisted interview. Before the model can ask meaningful, targeted questions, it needs to understand the full context of your situation: who is being interviewed, why, and what you already know. Think of the framing as writing a briefing document for a very capable but uninformed interviewer.

Introduction

The Introduction is the opening message your interviewee will see when they enter the chat. Write it as you would open a real interview: greet the participant, explain the purpose of the conversation, and set expectations for how it will unfold. This message cannot be replied to.

Question Section

When setting up your interview guide, you organize your interview into sections, each representing a distinct sub-theme or topic area. Sections give the interview structure and help the AI stay focused as the conversation progresses. For each section, you will need to review the following points:

  • Add section: Create you own section from scratch
  • Generate section: Have the AI help you formulate/draft an entire section which you can check and revise.

Section Description
For each section you need to provide an overall description. Explain the goal of the section, any specific themes or topics to explore etc.. The more specific your description is, the better the AI will probe and follow up within that section.

Shuffle Section
If you have more than one section, you can specify that they should be shuffled. If you select “Shuffle Section", that specific section will be a part of the sections that appear in a random order during the interview. This is useful if you want to control for ordering effects.

+ Add Question
You can formulate your own main questions by clicking on: "+ Add Question". For each section you can add as many questions as you want/need.

+ Generate Question
You can get the AI-interviewer to help you formulate questions by clicking on: "+ Generate Question".

AI Generated Questions
This feature gives the AI interviewer the freedom to formulate its own questions based on the section description and context you provide. This works well for unstructured interviews where sections contain only brief topic notes rather than specific questions. Simply specify how many questions the AI should generate for the section.

  • AI Generated Questions: Specify the number of questions that will be automatically generated once the predefined ones are finished.

AI Generated Sections
This feature gives the AI interviewer the freedom to formulate entire new sections based on the interview framing and previous parts of the interview. This works well for unstructured interviews where sections contain only brief topic notes rather than specific questions. Simply specify how many questions the AI should generate for the section.

  • AI generated Sections: Specify the number of sections that will be automatically generated once the predefined ones are finished.

Questions

Description
Each main question needs a description providing the AI with context for that specific question. Use it to clarify the intent behind the question, highlight key themes to explore, and guide the AI on where and how to follow up and probe.

Main Question
Formulate your main question. Based on the behavior flags, this will be asked verbatim in the interview.

Add Image

  • Description for AI: A description of the image, only visible to the AI. This description will help the AI with probing.
  • Primer text: A message shown to the respondent before the image appears in the chat.
  • Alt text: Displayed if the image fails to load, of read aloud by accessibility software for visually impaired users.

Add Survey Item

  • Single choice (Radio): The respondent selects one option from a list.
  • Multiple choice (Checkbox): The respondent selects one or more options from a list.
  • Likert scale: The respondent rates their level of agreement or satisfaction on a fixed scale.
  • Slider: The respondent picks a value by dragging along a range.
  • Number: The respondent enters a numerical value.
  • Date: The respondent enters a specific date.
  • Date and time: The respondent enters a specific date and time.
  • Time: The respondent enters a specific time.

Add Condition

  • Skip probes: The AI skips follow-up questions for this question and moves on based on a response you specify.
  • Skip this question: The question is skipped based on a response you specify.
  • Skip entire section: The whole section is skipped based on a response you specify.
  • End interview: The interview is ended immediately based on a response you specify.

Follow-up Probes:

Suggest follow-up probes for the AI to use. The AI may ask them as written, rephrase them to fit the conversation, or come up with its own based on the respondent's answers.

Probing Limits

  • Max probes: The maximal amount of follow-up probes the AI-interviewer is allowed to ask
  • Time spend probing: The maximal amount of time the AI-interviewer can spend on probing (This includes the time the respondent spends answering)

Behavior Flags

  • Exclude from history: Excludes the question from the conversation history, meaning the AI will not have access to the respondent's answer when asking other questions.
  • Create Transition: Reformulates the main question to include a natural transition from the previous question.
  • Check if answered: Checks if the question has already been answered earlier in the interview. If so, the question is reformulated to account for the previous answer.
  • Check if exhausted: Checks during probing whether the topic has been sufficiently covered, based on the provided context.
  • Can answer: Controls whether the respondent can reply. Disable to send multiple messages in a row without allowing a response in between.
  • Can skip: Presents the respondent with a skip button when hovering over the question.
  • Shuffle question: Randomly shuffles the order of this question within its section. Requires multiple questions in the same section to have this flag enabled.

Outro

The outro is the last message that will be sent to the respondent and will end the interview. As such it cannot be responded to.

Timed Messages

Timed messages are single-turn messages that are sent to the respondent after a specific amount of time has passed in the interview. This can for instance be used if their total time has been spent, but they haven't finished the interview yet.