Projective Interviewing

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Projective Interviewing

• INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods
• 11 March 2008

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theme from last week

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

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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

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what is projective interviewing?

• Mapping Exercises
• Spatial maps
• Social maps
• Tours
• Photoelicitation
• Photo diaries
• Sorting Tasks
• Personal construct interviews
• Technology/Cultural Probes

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mapping exercises

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

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hierarchical diagramming
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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

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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
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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

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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

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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.
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cultural/technology probes
Gaver et al.
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RECALL 1 Advantage 1 Disadvantage of
interviewing
artificiality distance from event/experience
efficiency generate a large amount of material
on a specific topic in a short amount of time
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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

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In summarywho creates the artifact varies
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and when/where the artifact is created varies