re:design for learning

iPad interview software

Tagpad is an interesting proposition. It is an iPad app that records interviews, displays questions, allows note taking, and the use of checklists. In effect, it is an interviewing suite. At the moment, however, it seems to be most useful for very structured interviews. The creators describe one of its key strengths as being able to tag sections of an interview that correspond to particular questions in real-time. This saves enormous amounts of categorizing effort afterwards and the software live-saves interviews to a Dropbox account so collaborators can begin analysis immediately. I can see the app being very useful for large scale projects that involve a lot of research assistants but for the kind of ‘interviews as conversations’ that I tend to do I think that all the structuring imposed by the software would probably render the experience of using it quite frustrating.

At any rate the team led by Barry Brown at UCSD is offering the app for free to researchers and looking for feedback. I await with interest the development of this and other social science research apps.