Both interviews with Brandon Stanton and the IIT Institute of Design not only highlighted various techniques used to have a successful interview, but also depicts the purpose of conducting interviews.
According to Brandon Stanton, the purpose of Humans of New York and for interviews in general, is to simply present the interviewee as they are and by what they say. He steers clear from preconceived notions and biases, especially from politics. While this method of interviewing is beneficial in the sense that it prevents pre-constructed answers and makes the interviewing process more genuine and raw, I feel that it is innate to search for explanations and make connections of our experiences to larger political or societal issues. In other words, the interviewee is automatically telling their story with some kind of outside influence influencing the way they tell their story whether they know it or not.
Similarly, the IIT Institute of Design’s video also focuses on searching for the truth when conducting an interview, mostly by looking through the interviewee’s eyes. The video provides some tips for doing this such as making the subject comfortable, the importance of location, types of questions asked etc.
Overall, both videos focus on the importance of accurately representing the information given in an interview and how to get that information in its purest form and provide guidelines for how to achieve this goal which will be helpful for when I conduct my future interviews.
Yes, it is important to convey what the interviewee tells you in an accurate way.