common mistakes in interviewing Ignoring prime opportunities for probing Interrupting Unshakeable assumptions Embedding answers in your questions Asking more than one question at a time

analysing interviews

transcribing – tedious but necessaryhow tedious? 1:3 ratio

(interview:transcription time)memory jog – making links between

interviewscode as you go, but make transcript itself

visually distinct from your codes

INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

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

What is projective interviewing? Photoelicitation

Photo diaries

Mapping ExercisesSpatial mapsSocial mapsTours

Sorting TasksPersonal construct interviews

Technology/Cultural Probes

“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]

beyond photos: stories, skits

Family Photo Albums

photoelicitation

mapping exercises

geographical spacesmap of the home, neighborhood

social spaces (enumeration tasks)social network mappinghierarchical diagramming

hierarchical diagramming

touring spaces

home tours - to elicit responses to the material environment, comments on arrangement of space

tour of computer ‘interior’ tour of a user interface tour of a mobile phone – address book,

text messages, call log

sorting activities

images of technologies, settings, advertisements, peopleon what basis would you

sort these images?pick the odd one out of a

group and explain.

e.g. personal construct interviews

Example 1: “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

Example 2: cultural probes Packets of information and

tasks handed out to participants (w/ interviews before and/or after)

Topic: attitudes of widely dispersed European elderly towards their lives, cultural environs, and technology.

[Also: technology probes as a related interdisciplinary methodological approach]

[Gaver et al.]

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

Projective Techniques: some benefits

Summary: who creates the artifact?Authored Artifact Produced

By 3rd Party Magazine ads Produced independently of the research project

Family photos

Consumer technologies

By Researcher Technology probes Produced within the research project

Photo or Card Decks (for sorting)

By Interviewee Photo diaries

Maps of Salient Environs

When Produced Purpose Served by the Artifact

In the course of the interview (i.e. maps, diagrams, drawings)

As a memory jog

Discussion piece

Analytical device

In the course of everyday life (i.e. photo diaries, photo tasks)

As a memory jog

Closing the distance between lived experience and the interview event

To address access issues

Summary: when/where artifact is created

Expert/Elite Interviews and Focus Groups Tuesdays class - Megan Finn, Bob Bell,

Ashwin Mathew (PhD students in the iSchool) will reflect on their experiences conducting expert/elite interviews