Interviews: Soccer Explained

In order to further my understanding of soccer I decided to interview the experts. My first interview was with a die-hard soccer player/fan named Andy. One of my first observations was that he was wearing a t-shirt with some sort of soccer label, showing his cultural involvement with soccer. Andy was extremely enthusiastic about this interview, which made things go smooth. Ideally I would have conducted a contextual Interview, which is an interview held in the expert’s environment or place of work being done, but because of scheduling conflicts, I had to catch him right after one of his intramural soccer games. This wasn’t too bad because he could directly reflect back to a game he had just previously played. Andy’s results were very thorough and detailed, and extremely informative. (see his results below). He drew a very in depth visual representation of a game of soccer including descriptive labeling of the field and player positions, down to the yardage of some of the field lines. He also drew small thumbnail artifact drawings of equipment involved with a game of soccer. This is a technique that interaction designers have adopted in order to document information find key breakdowns in a flow sequence.
My second interview was very similar to Andy’s. Like Andy, Jonah has a great love for the sport. He was also very visually thorough with his responses. This phase of the project for me was the most informative. Using the experts as a resource, and asking them to elaborate about a certain topic, was very effective for me to figure out the game of soccer. This, for me, was a great platform to begin my deconstruction of the game.


Check out this neat soccer clip from one of my Interviewees Jonah:
Jonah Soccer Footwork

(notice the soccer inspired clothing)

Interview 1: Jonah



(Click images for a larger view)

Interview 2: Andy






When asked to explain the game of soccer either visually, or verbally, detailed drawings, shown above were the out come.

Key Take-aways:

• Different terminology is used to describe the same things.

• Words and visuals were used in order for them describe the game of soccer.

• People have a high respect for the game. I asked each subject what was the first word that came to mind when they heard the word soccer?

Andy's response, "Superior"

Jonah's response,"Pride"

• Each Subject drew the entire field.

• Every aspect of the game was important to them, including uniform.