Choose collection methods

A one-on-one interview is a listening conversation between you and one project participant. You ask questions, and they respond.

One-on-one interviews are especially useful in these situations:

• Your participants don't know or trust each other, but they trust you (or your role, or a group you represent).
• Your topic is personal and sensitive, and you don't think people will be able to open up about it in a group.
• Your participants are of especially high or low status in the community and must be approached with special respect.
• You want to gather fewer but longer stories.

For example, say you want to improve how you help people recover from natural disasters. Recent survivors might be willing to tell you about their experiences, but they wouldn't be likely to know other survivors. Also, they are probably tired of filling out forms, but they might want to talk to a real person about their experiences.

A group interview is a guided conversation between you and 2-5 project participants. You ask questions, and they all respond, and sometimes they respond to each other.

Group interviews are especially useful in these situations:

• You want to ask your participants to dredge up memories from the deep past. In one-on- one interviews, they might come up empty. But in a group interview, they might remind each other of stories to tell.
• Your participants are of low status in the community and are likely to think that they have nothing to offer the project. A conversation in a supportive group of equals might help them find their voices.
• Your participants are of high status in the community and might see "playing a game" as beneath them; but they would value a conversation among their peers.
• Your participants are very young or very old. In either case they aren't likely to follow an exercise or fill out a form, and they might be overly compliant in an individual interview. Having other people around of their own age will bring them into an experience of semi-random play (for children) or comfortable reminiscence (for the elderly).
• It's easy to get your participants together; in fact, they already talk to each other. They might even meet on a regular basis. But you don't think they would be able or willing to participate in a group exercise. A group interview is simple and direct, and you think they would prefer that.

For example, say your annual conference is coming up soon. Fewer people attend every year, but some have been there since the beginning. If you were to replace your annual survey with some group interviews, it might liven up the conference, and it might help you find some new ideas you can use.

A peer interview is a suggested conversation among 2-3 project participants. They ask each other questions (which you gave them), and they respond to each other.

Peer interviews are especially useful in these situations:

• Your participants know and trust their friends, family members, or colleagues, but they don't know and trust everyone in the community or organization, nor do they know and trust you.
• You want people to talk about experiences that are hard to explain, and you think they will find it easier to talk about those experiences with other people who have had similar experiences—but not with too many other people; just one or two.
• Since participants can choose to give you only the parts of their conversations they want to share, they might be willing to say more than they might otherwise.
• You think your participants will find the idea of interviewing each other interesting and fun. Even so, you don't think they'd go so far as to want to participate in a group exercise with random people they don't know.
• Your participants are busy, and they can't fit one more meeting into their schedule. But they might be able and willing to set up a peer interview with a friend or colleague, maybe in their off hours, especially if it looks interesting.
• Your participants have a strong sense of ownership over the project and want to take not only their stories but the conversations in which their stories are collected into their own hands.

For example, say membership in your volunteer group has been declining. If you called a special story-sharing meeting, few people might come. But you could ask each member to reach out to a member who has stopped coming.

A survey is a form people fill out. They read (or hear) your questions and respond to them (in speech or writing) on their own.

Surveys are especially useful in these situations:

• Your access to your participants is shallow. They will probably pay very little attention to anything you say or do. Most of them will not even notice that you invited them to participate in a project.
• Your access to your participants is fleeting. You may be able to get their attention, but you can only get it for a few minutes.
• Your participants consider your topic too personal to talk about with anyone at all. They might be willing to put a message in a bottle and drop it in the sea, but that's all they will do.
• You don't have any participants, not yet. This is a small, exploratory project. You hope to find participants by putting out a wide request, but you have no idea how many people will answer the request, and you have no idea how much time or energy anyone will be willing to put into the project.
• You have too many participants to be able to talk to them all at length, and you don't want to leave anyone out.
• You have no resources to work with in your project. You don't have time or helpers or sponsors. Putting up a web survey is the only way you can do the project at all.

For example, say you're concerned about the future of your local farmers' market. You wonder if it needs to change with the times. If you were to place some short surveys at the tables where people sit down to eat, you might get some new ideas.

A journal is one project participant's periodic reflection on their experiences. They read (or hear) your questions and respond to them (in speech or writing) on their own. A journal is like a survey, except that people fill it out multiple times, either every so often or every time something happens (whether it's an event or just a thought).

Journals are especially useful in these situations:

• You want to explore a topic in a deep and focused way, so you need the nuanced sorts of reflections you can only get when people go back to the same topic day after day or week after week.
• You don't need people to look back over a long period of time, and you don't need people to remind each other of stories to tell. Instead, you want people to focus on the situations they are in right now.
• Your participants are committed to the project and are willing and able to tell stories not just once but several times.
• Your topic is sensitive or private, and your participants would prefer to reflect on it by themselves, not with others.
• Your topic has a time element to it, such as a process people go through, and you want to follow people as they go through the process.
• Your project has relatively few participants, and it will be hard to get enough stories to work with unless you ask each person to tell several stories.
• You have enough resources to handle the greater volume of data you will collect by having people tell several stories instead of one or a few.

For example, say your software development team just got through an alarmingly unpopular release. After the crisis was over, you decided to take a good hard look at how you listen to your customers. Everyone in the team agreed to keep a weekly journal for the next few months, then get together to talk about what you found out.

A narrative incident account (NIA) is a story about a witnessed event from the perspective of a project participant. They read (or hear) your questions and respond to them (in speech or writing) on their own. A NIA is like a survey, but the stories participants tell are about events they saw happen.

Narrative incident accounts are especially useful in these situations:

• Your participants support other people in some way, dealing with incidents as they come up in their daily life or work.
• Your participants experience so many events that if you ask days or weeks later, the events will blend together into general scenarios, and telling details will be lost.
• Your participants already reflect on (and maybe fill out forms about) each incident, so you have a timely opportunity to ask them about their experiences.

For example, say the tour guides at your museum interact with dozens of visitors every day, but when you ask them for their recollections, they speak in generalities. If you gave them a way to recount each interaction just after it has ended, you might learn some useful things about your visitors.

A story-sharing session is a meeting of 3-30 participants that includes one or more game- like activities. The activities may or may not incorporate story-eliciting questions, but in some way or other they help people share stories with each other.

Story-sharing sessions are especially useful in these situations:

• Your goals are ambitious and your participants are enthusiastic. Everyone is ready to do whatever it takes to gather meaningful stories that will support sensemaking.
• Your participants are active people who are easily bored. Sharing stories in a game-like setting will engage them in ways that sitting for interviews or filling out forms will not.
• Your topic is not sensitive or private, and your participants will not feel uncomfortable or offended if you ask them to share stories about it in a game-like atmosphere.
• Your participants do not consider themselves to be of especially high or low social status (in general, or in your community or organization), and they are not likely to react to a game-like activity as something that is beneath them or out of reach for them.
• Your topic is not one your participants have thought a lot about. You think a game-like activity will help them explore it more deeply than they could if you asked about it in a more direct way.
• Your participants trust you (or your role) enough to follow your instructions—as long as your instructions are clear, interesting, and relevant.
• You have facilitated group exercises before, or you are willing to learn as you go.
• You have a physical location or online solution with plenty of space, working surfaces, and flexibility for small-group conversation.

For example, say you're in charge of the internship program, and you want to improve it. You've been talking to interns for weeks, and you have yet to find anyone who does not want to get involved. In fact, you've already made some changes to your plans based on their excellent suggestions. it makes sense to bring them all together and give them a lively activity that will bring their fresh perspectives into the program.

A gleaned story is a story that was told and recorded before your project began. You don't write questions to bring out these stories; you look for them.

Gleaned stories are especially useful in these situations:

• You have access to, and permission to study, a body of recorded conversations in which people have shared stories.
• There is no way to engage with the people you need to hear from. You cannot convince— or even ask—them to participate in your project. They cannot or will not speak to you in any way.
• You can engage with the people you want to hear from, but you would like to learn more about them before you decide how you want to approach them.

For example, say you wish you could hear from customers who have canceled their services, but there is no way to reach them. The only trace of them you have left is their final conversations with your customer support staff. Still, there might be some lessons there.

A project that only drew its stories out of recorded conversations would be an extractive one, not a participatory one. But if you asked people to make sense of your gleaned stories together, especially if you asked them to respond to the gleaned stories with stories of their own, you could build a participatory project that begins with gleaned stories.

You can collect stories in two or more ways within the same project. Sometimes you need to do this because different groups of participants cannot be reached in the same way. But even if you only have one group of participants, you can offer them multiple ways to share a story. For example, you can invite them to join a story-sharing session, fill out a survey, or schedule an interview over the phone. This helps everyone find a way of contributing that works for them, and it helps the project gather a broad range of experiences.