Running an interview

Today’s interviews

The study’s agenda opens with an Interviews section above the guide. Its header shows how many interviews are still upcoming, and it lists the ones scheduled for today in the study’s timezone.

Each row shows the time, the participant’s name and email address, and a status. Two statuses matter on the day:

• Participant online. The participant has signed in and is waiting, so you can start.
• In progress. The interview room is open.

The buttons on each row are Links, which shows the participant’s personal link in case they need it again, Start Interview, and Mark Complete. The row menu has Resend Confirmation. Click the participant’s name to open their detail panel.

Below the list, a link such as + 4 more scheduled opens the Interviews page with every booking. New bookings don’t appear on their own; use the refresh icon in the section header.

Starting the interview

1. Click Start Interview on the participant’s row. You can start whenever you’re ready; you don’t have to wait for the scheduled time.
2. In Check Your Audio & Video, choose your camera, microphone, and speaker, then click Join.
3. The room opens and recording starts on its own. A participant who was waiting is brought in automatically.

Participants can enter from a few minutes before their start time, set by Early Access in the scheduling settings. If they arrive before you’ve started, they see Waiting for host… until you do.

If you drop out or close the tab, the button on the row reads Rejoin Interview. You can also start an interview from its detail panel on the Interviews page, which takes you to the agenda and starts it there.

In the room

Video and content. An interview opens with video front and center. The mode button in the top bar reads Video Mode or Content Mode and switches everyone between the video and the guide. While in video mode, the eye icon next to it lets you look at the guide yourself while the participant keeps seeing video.

Activities. To bring the participant into an activity, open it and click Join Now. That switches everyone to content mode and puts the activity on their screen. What they submit is saved to the study’s results, the same as in any session.

Screen sharing. Share in the call controls shares your screen. The participant can share theirs too, which is useful for walkthroughs and usability questions.

Notes. A Notes panel opens beside the call for leaders. Type as you go; it saves automatically, and Save Now forces a save. Notes are kept with the booking, so they’re still there if the call reconnects, and they appear later on the booking’s Notes tab. They also travel with the transcript into Report Builder and the Session Assistant.

Call controls. Mute, camera, Share, and More for Device Settings. Participants have Leave. Leaders have End, which asks whether to End Conference for All or just Leave Conference and keep the room running.

Tip

If a participant can’t hear or be heard, the fixes are the same as for any Converge call. See Audio and video.

Observers

Observers and reviewers on the study see the same list of today’s interviews. Their button reads Waiting for Leader until you start the interview, then Join Live. Anyone already signed in is prompted to join when the room opens. Observers listen and watch with their own camera and microphone off.

Observers aren’t notified about bookings, so tell them when to sign on. Adding them is covered in Team and calendars.

Finishing

Click End and choose End Conference for All to close the room, then Mark Complete on the participant’s row. Converge asks you to confirm, because marking complete removes the interview from today’s list and ends the session for the participant if they’re still in the room. They see an Interview Complete message with a Finish button.

Ending the call on its own doesn’t change the booking’s status. An interview stays Scheduled until you mark it Completed, or set it to No Show from the Status dropdown in the detail panel.

Recruited participants are paid on Completed

For a participant recruited through User Interviews, marking the interview Completed triggers their incentive payment, and No Show records a no-show against them. Converge asks you to confirm either change.

The recording and transcript arrive a little after the call ends. See Recordings, transcripts, and analysis.

Good to know

• If a participant is late. Their link lets them in until six minutes after the scheduled end. After that their booking page offers to schedule a new interview.
• If a call drops. Rejoin from the same row. One interview can produce more than one recording when that happens, and all of them are kept with the booking.
• Try it first. Preview in the top bar creates a preview interview you can run end to end before any real participant books. See Setting up an interview study.