Interview Debrief: One Conversation, On the Record

An interview that isn't put on the record promptly gets misremembered — confirmation bias quietly keeps the parts the interviewer liked and drops the rest. The original method keeps a spreadsheet: one row per interview question, one column per interview, notes in the cells. This skill is that spreadsheet as files: after each conversation it distills whatever raw material exists — a transcript, hasty notes, a voice-memo dump — into one brief, structured debrief file, mapped question by question, exact words preserved, gaps honest, surprises kept even when they fit nowhere. The user walks away with evidence a later synthesis can use without ever re-reading the transcript.

The mental model

The record turns anecdote into evidence