INTERVIEW REHEARSAL LAB · PRACTICE PACK 01

Reconstruct the incident before suggesting a fix

A 30-minute workshop for three people: interviewer, participant and observer. Practice recovering the order of a real-world task, then separate what happened from what remains unknown. The scenario and all quotations below are invented training material.

You need: paper or a shared document, a timer and the eight incident cards. No account, recording or customer data is needed to use this exercise.

1. Set the roles · minutes 0–4

The participant reads all eight cards and answers only from them. If a detail is missing, say “I don't remember” or “That isn't in my notes.” The interviewer receives cards A, D and G first. The observer keeps the full packet and marks each question as an event question, an interpretation or a proposed solution. Rotate roles for another round if time permits.

2. The incident cards · minutes 4–10

These cards describe one fictional Tuesday. Their letter order is deliberately different from their time order.

1. A — The handoff. “At 09:10 I emailed the exported file to a teammate. I thought a blank sheet meant there were no open requests.”
2. B — The acknowledgement. “At 09:06 the page said ‘Download complete’. I didn't open the file until after I sent it.”
3. C — The selection. “At 09:02 I selected the North region. I don't remember what date range was selected.”
4. D — The interruption. “At 09:18 my teammate asked why the totals were missing. That's when I opened the attachment.”
5. E — The saved view. “The view was called Monthly. I can't remember whether I chose that view before or after changing the region.”
6. F — The workaround. “At 09:27 I copied the visible rows into a new spreadsheet and sent that instead.”
7. G — The request. “A warning before sending would be useful. I don't know whether anyone else has had this happen.”
8. H — The starting task. “At 08:55 I was asked to send the current open-request totals for North. I had last done this about a month earlier.”

3. Run the interview · minutes 10–18

Start with “Take me back to that morning. What were you trying to send?” Recover the steps between the request and the replacement spreadsheet. Ask for the next event before asking for an explanation. The participant may reveal a remaining card when a question reaches its event.

If you hear “Download complete”, ask what happened immediately afterwards. If you hear “Monthly”, ask what the participant remembers about choosing the view. A missing detail stays missing: the interviewer must not supply a date range or invent an export failure.

For more examples of questions grounded in past behaviour, see a practical guide to past-event questions. Use the questions to recover the incident before discussing a proposed feature.

4. Compare the notes · minutes 18–25

Draw four columns: time · reported action · basis · unanswered question. Add the card letter to the basis column so another reader can trace each entry. Label quotations as the participant's report; this exercise contains no screen recording or system log.

The observer checks three things: did the interviewer place E at a made-up time, treat G as proof of a repeated need, or write that the export system failed? Each is an unsupported addition. Correct it before the debrief.

5. Debrief · minutes 25–30

Each person names one detail recovered through a specific question and one detail deliberately left unresolved. Rewrite the incident in three sentences: the task, the observed sequence as reported, and the remaining gap. Keep a proposed solution in a separate sentence, labelled as a suggestion.

A useful result: another reader can reconstruct the six timed events, find the source card for each claim and see exactly where the exercise stops supporting a conclusion.

Original practice material · Version 1 · 7 November 2026. Reuse the exercise with invented examples or information you have permission to share.