What it is for: A stakeholder interview is a 30-minute, one-to-one conversation in which you ask someone to walk you through a recent, real experience with a service or process. You leave with a set of worksheets, one per interview, holding the questions asked, the person's own words, the evidence you saw and the open follow-ups.
Who it helps: Service designers, product teams and policy officers who need to hear from applicants, staff or approvers before they define a problem.
When to use it
At the start of a project, before anyone has agreed what the problem is.
When complaints, data or a senior request point to a problem but nobody can say why it happens.
When different groups (applicants, staff, approvers) describe the same process in very different ways.
How to use it
Write one sentence naming the experience you want to understand, then pick five to eight people who lived it.
Prepare six to eight open questions that walk through the experience in order.
Open with consent: say you are studying the process, not judging the person.
Anchor on the last real time they did it and bring generalities back to that event.
Write their exact words, follow up on surprises, and debrief together within 15 minutes.
Tip: Interview in pairs. One person listens and asks, the other writes. Doing both at once loses the exact words.
Credits and sources: Original Tiremesù worksheet and wording. Further reading: 18F Methods https://github.com/18F/methods/tree/main/_methods
Full guide and film:https://www.tiremesu.com/guides/stakeholder-interviews
