While creating your HEARD, you will be prompted to select between explore and sequential mode.
The mode you choose will depend on your objectives and the nature of your research. Below we have outlined more about each choice, and some scenarios for choosing each one.
Explore Mode
If you prioritize broader learning across all interviews, you should choose Explore Mode. This option offers a more dynamic and adaptive approach to conducting interviews; participants are given questions based on insights gathered from previous interviews.
This flexibility is advantageous for:
A personalized interview experience. Allowing the mode to adapt questions based on a participant's responses or the trends indicated in prior interviews.
Exploring more topics across learning goals. All discussion questions that you choose are answered relatively uniformly, which means you are more likely to get insights across all your learning goals. In contrast, with sequential mode there could be a drop-off in responses in the later questions.
Optimizing for more participants with shorter interviews. With explore mode, each participant can be given fewer questions to answer. This means you can use your resources recruiting more participants to take shorter interviews.
Sequential Mode
If your goal is to maintain uniformity and control across interviews, Sequential Mode is ideal. With this mode each participant will be given the exact same list of questions, and in the exact order you want.
This structure is advantageous for:
Order and consistency. In this mode, questions are asked in a predefined, strict sequence that you establish beforehand.
Research that requires consistent collection. If you have a study that requires you to compare responses across multiple interviews as opposed to exploring themes more widely, this may be a better option.
Optimizing for less participants and longer interviews. Because interviews may tend to be longer with this mode since each and every question is asked, you may want to spend resources you have recruiting less people who are more willing to take a longer interview.