Nicole Bischof

Beyond projection: using collaborative visualization to conduct qualitative interviews

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue for the reflective use of visual techniques in qualitative inter-viewing and suggests using visuals not only as projective techniques to elicit answers, but also as facilitation techniques throughout the interview process. Design/methodology/approach – By reflecting on their own research projects in organization and management studies, the authors develop a practical approach to visual interviewing – making use of both projective and facilitation techniques. The paper concludes by discussing the limitations of visualization techniques, and suggesting directions for future research on visually enhanced interviewing. Findings – The integration of projective and facilitation techniques enables the interviewer to build rapport with the respondent(s), and to elicit deeper answers by providing cognitive stimulation. In the course of the interview, such an integrative approach brings along further advantages, most notably focusing attention, maintaining interaction...

Knowledge Visualization in Qualitative Methods -- Or How Can I See What I Say?

In several research fields, qualitative interviewing(i.e., face-to-face individual interviews and focus groups) is an essential approach to gather high-quality, and deep data about a wide range of subjective experiences. Although being a well-established research method, qualitative interviewing is fraught with various shortcomings such as difficulties in initiating the interview process, in eliciting tacit knowledge and in avoiding information redundancies. In this paper, we propose the use of visual tools (e.g., visualization software) as a support to facilitate the interview process and to gather sound qualitative data. Visual representations provide structure, context and explicitness, and thus foster knowledge elicitation and sharing in interviews. Our contribution is two-fold: First, we provide a methodological extension of qualitative interviewing. Second, we suggest a practical approach to use visuals in interviews, presenting concrete examples from the research field. We conclude our paper by discussing the limitations of our approach, and by suggesting directions for future research on visualization-based interviewing.