I never thought of doing a user end interview to think out how my research could be better shaped. I ran though what it would be like if I interviewed a person that my project is directed towards and thought about what questions I would ask them. Obviously I don’t have the ability to plan the whole conversation, but it made me think about how to phase the questions and what I am really trying to answer here. My project goal is to use about ten films made by Deepa Mehta to analyze how the Hindus people fought back against British policy and gain more rights for woman.
What am I asking here?
When I think of research projects, I think of outlines and writing papers. This was a great way to remind me that DH or not, there are so many ways to work though and shape research. History is about stories of people and events. How the world has been shaped. Doing an interview style outline made me really think about what I would ask and if that accurately applied to my research. I could put myself in that position. This is the moment that many have to decide if the project scope needs to be narrowed down or even is too specific and needs widening. In my case, this helped me to feel confident in how I simplified my topic to focus on only movies from one specific director. Having an interview style planning really shaped what I am asking for out of this project.
What is my audience?
Then as far as my audience, I knew this was already going to be quite niche. I ended up thinking of a bigger secondary audience than I originally intended. And I am ok with that. I realized with this interview style planning that one, I would be looking outside of academia, and two, I would be gaining a whole group of people that analyze films. This is great, I just have to be aware of those as a primary and secondary focus. This means that I will see how different types of people react to the project and the subject as a whole. I formed my audience to the idea that women will have an easier time connecting to the issue that many men will solely due to the fact that men, historically, have had more freedoms and rights than women. So when I was coming up with questions for the interview, this made me think back to what audience this is meant for and how to reach them in an effective format.