Our practices for conducting researcher interviews have shifted meaningfully, and the specific changes are worth naming.
We formalized our technical quote review policy
We now consistently let researchers review the specific technical quotes attributed to them, solely for accuracy, before publication, a narrow exception to our general policy that we've made standard for this category specifically.
We started building in more lead time for scheduling
Early on, we sometimes pushed for faster turnaround on researcher interviews than their schedules comfortably allowed. We now plan our coverage calendar with more lead time specifically for this category.
We adjusted our opening questions to reduce institutional caution
We've found that asking what result in a researcher's own recent work surprised them most reliably cuts through institutional messaging more effectively than other opening questions, and we now use it more consistently.
Why this evolution matters
We think researcher interviews carry a specific responsibility to represent technical work accurately, and we've made real process changes to reduce that risk while still surfacing genuine, candid insight.