This immediately alleviates the issue of note-taking, since they can concentrate on taking more traditional, comprehensive notes and leave you to focus on the conversation.
The best advice I can offer is to add a second person to your interview to observe and take notes. It’s totally possible to be both an engaged interviewer and an effective note-taker.
How to take interview notes more effectively Concentrate on cementing key points in your memory and on recording the locations of important moments that you can return to in the analysis phase.
In this model, you should concentrate on a streamlined set of note-taking priorities. Instead, picture interview notes as a cheat sheet that you’re writing for your future analysis. Frantically scribbling notes on everything you hear will distract you from that goal. That’s because in an interview, your most important job is to establish a connection with your participant and to collect quality data. In fact, trying to write everything down will hinder you, rather than help you. But in the era of recording technology, we no longer need this mentality. In other contexts, we often think of taking notes as a way to comprehensively record the conversation. In order to make your interview notes as effective as possible, you’ll want to understand better what you’ll use them for. What we get wrong about note-taking (and what to do instead) Here are our favorite tactics for becoming a more effective note-taker. How do you balance recording and cementing information-while also engaging fully with your participant? Taking notes during a 1:1 interview can be daunting. Save time in analysis, and dedicate more attention to your participants, with these approaches to note-taking.