Projective Interviewing

1. INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods 12 March 2009 Projective Interviewing

2. Assignment 2 • You must record your interviews

3. Themes reviewed • interviewing as a negotiation: • letting the interviewee lead the way • guiding toward topics, providing prompts and encouragement, memory jogs

4. what is projective interviewing? • creative strategies for eliciting description, interpretation that incorporate materials (photos, objects, diagrams etc) into the interview process • …but can be distracting, time-consuming, intrusive

5. what is projective interviewing? • Mapping Exercises • Spatial maps • Social maps • Tours • Photoelicitation • Photo diaries • Sorting Tasks • Personal construct interviews • Technology/Cultural Probes

6. mapping exercises • geographical spaces • map of the home, neighborhood • social spaces • social network mapping • hierarchical diagramming

7. hierarchical diagramming

8. touring spaces • home tours - to elicit responses to the material environment, comments on arrangement of space • tour of computer ‘interior’ • tour of a mobile phone – address book, text messages, call log

9. photoelicitation • “photographs are charged with psychological and highly emotional elements and symbols. In the depth study of culture it is often this very characteristic that allows people to express their ethos while reading the photographs.” [Collier and Collier] Family Photo Albums beyond photos: stories, skits

10. sorting activities • images of technologies, settings, advertisements, people • on what basis would you sort these images? • pick the odd one out of a group and explain. • e.g. personal construct interviews

11. Example:“The Meaning of Domestic Technologies: a personal construct analysis of familial gender relations” – Sonia Livingstone • Topic: Looking at how husbands and wives separately experience and account for their domestic technologies • Method: separate interviews with husband and wife, in home, for 45 minutes. Asked to sort technologies into groups and explain. • outcome: women emphasize domestic technologies as necessities, different notions of control over tech, the telephone as key difference

12. cultural/technology probes • Emerging in the HCI community • An interdisciplinary methodological approach • “A probe is an instrument that is deployed to find out about the unknown - to hopefully return with useful or interesting data.” [Hutchinson et al.] • Recall our discussion of subjectivity [Gaver et al.]

13. cultural/technology probes [Gaver et al.]

14. RECALL: 1 Advantage & 1 Disadvantage [of interviewing] efficiency: generate a large amount of material on a specific topic in a short amount of time artificiality: distance from event/experience

15. Projective Techniques: some benefits • Bridging the distance between lived experience and the artificiality of the interview event • Aiding memory (cognitive assistance) • Accessing the affective dimension of experience • Engagement and the research partnership -- keeping interviewees committed to the task

16. In summary…who creates the artifact varies…

17. …and when/where the artifact is created varies…

18. BACKUP

19. Relevance • "artifacts as culture derives…from their active participation in a process of social self-creation in which they are directly constitutive of our understanding of ourselves and others...”[Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption]

20. analysing interviews • transcribing – tedious but necessary • how tedious? 1:3 ratio (interview:transcription time) • memory jog – making links between interviews • code as you go, but make transcript itself visually distinct from your codes