NEH Website Evaluation Survey (Part 2)

Interview Script
National Endowment for the Humanities • January 2018
Intro & Context

Hi, I’m Julia/Tim! I’m a User Experience Associate/Designer with Forum One, a full-service
digital agency. Thanks for meeting with me today! I really appreciate you taking time out of your
day to chat.
Our goal is to redesign the main website for the National Endowment for the Humanities,
NEH.gov. We’re interviewing people around the US who have been or could be recipients of an
NEH grant. We want to better understand your needs so we can enhance the website to make it
more efficient and useful to you in your work.

OMB Burden Statement
Before we get started, I need to let you know that Forum One is conducting this survey on
behalf of the National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH, which is a federal agency.
Because Forum One is conducting this survey on NEH’s behalf, we may share your responses
to this survey with NEH. The Office of Management and Budget requires federal agencies to
supply information on the time needed to complete this survey and also to invite comments on
the burden associated with this survey. NEH estimates that the average time to complete this
survey, including reviewing the instructions, is 45 minutes. Your response to this survey
is voluntary.
Please send any comments regarding the estimated completion time or any other aspect of this
survey to Jesse Moss at NEH. Her email address is [email protected].
Please note that NEH may not conduct or sponsor, and you are not required to respond to, this
survey unless we disclose to you a valid OMB Number. The OMB Number for this survey is
3136-0140.

Free to speak your mind
I’ll be asking you questions about your work and your general needs. I just ask that you share
your honest thoughts and opinions, positive and negative. Nothing you say will hurt our feelings.
Like I mentioned earlier, our goal is to better serve you. Your honest feedback is a key part of
that.

Recording
I would like to record our conversation today to help my analysis. The recording allows us to go
back and review important parts in the conversation. Your name will not be linked to your
comments. Do you have any objections to that? Thanks!

Questions
Let’s get started!
1. Tell me about the organization you work for and your role in it.
2. Do you have any regular tasks that involve the grants process?
3. Have you ever applied for a grant?
a. Where have you applied for grants?
b. How many times?
c. Where do you get ideas for new grant-funded initiatives?
d. How do you identify potential grant sources?
e. How do you select which grant sources to apply to?
4. Please describe the most recent experience you had finding and applying for a grant from
NEH.
a. Please rate your experience on a scale of 1 [very poor] to 5 [excellent]. Describe
the reason for this rating.
5. What knowledge, information, or materials have you found are essential for you to have
during the grant process?
6. What have you seen happen without these essential materials?
7. Have you ever had an experience where you didn’t end up applying for a grant for
reasons related to the grantmaker? What were these reasons?
8. Have you ever had a question/issue arise while applying for a grant?
a. [If yes] What did you do to answer that question? (i.e. call grantmaker, Google,
colleague, etc.)
b. [If no] What would you do if you had a question/issue arise while applying to a
grant?
9. Are there resources or people that you refer to regularly for guidance in obtaining grants?
(listservs, other communities, in-person events, etc)

NEH.gov Walk-Through
For ease of testing and to eliminate any technological problems, we will be using Zoom and
share mouse control. I will have the site open, share my screen and then give the participant
control. They complete the tasks on my screen.
https://www.neh.gov/

I’m going to ask you to walk through a series of tasks on the NEH.gov website.
Tasks
1. We have the home page open for you on the screen. Feel free to scroll around the page,
but don’t click on anything yet. Please describe what you see.
2. In your own words, what does NEH do?
3. Without clicking on anything, what would you do next to start the process of finding a
grant to apply for? What do you expect will happen from here?
4. Start the process of finding a grant to apply for. On each page:
a. Describe what you see.
b. What do you expect will happen from here?
5. What would you do if you had a question or got stuck?
Follow-Up Questions
1. What was your favorite thing about the website you saw?
2. What was your least favorite thing about the website?
3. Do you have any final recommendations for improving the website?

Wrap Up
Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue to interview people and learn more about their
experiences. We will summarize our findings and provide recommendations to the NEH team.
Our primary goal is to improve the NEH.gov website and your feedback is a key part of making
that happen.

Goodbye
Thanks again for your time and have a great week!
[End Call]