What: Face-to-face, phone or online conversations to gather deep insights, first-hand experiences or expert opinions

When: If you are interested in gaining more context and understanding of your stakeholders (e.g. to better interpret quantitative data)

See our tips on interview etiquette.

What: Group discussion to stimulate conversation about a (range of) topic(s)

When: If you are looking for a better understanding of an issue that is shared by multiple people and you assume the group dynamic will give you additional relevant information

What: Extensive description of what is happening by observing people in their natural setting

When: If you do not just want to ask people about how they do or experience something but rather see it with your own eyes to get a better idea of their experience

What: arts-based research methods are generally seen as part of the field of creative methods, where artistic practices are used to help answer research or evaluation questions, or where more commonly-used methods are combined with artistic practices. The artist is likely to be involved at both the research delivery and the analysis stage, and the participants too, including:

• Story-stems - giving participants the beginning of a story and asking them to complete the story (using words, drawings, creating characters using craft materials, puppets, etc).

• Writing - documenting through writing, which could include poetry, graphic novels, cartoons, short stories and more. 

• Visualisation - visualising an experience or result in some way including through, for example, drawing, collage, sculpture, collaborative film-making and photography.

• Performance - making a performance (e.g. through writing or improvising music or a play). 

• Photovoice - an established technique combining photography and accompanying words or text. 

• Creative mapping - asking participants to draw their journey in the form of a map, which can be helpful to understand a user journey and to think about how an experience or emotion has changed over time. This could also be combined with emotion mapping. 

• Crafting - making something practically, e.g. with textiles, knitting, or other types of physical materials. 

• Digital story-telling - a participant (or group of participants working together) shapes a narrative about their experience, often combining words (e.g. through sub-titles and structures), visuals (e.g. through videos or photography) and sound (e.g. spoken description). 

• Creative drawing or writing in response to a prompt - creating an art-work in response to a prompt, and then analysing that art work to understand the meaning(s) behind it, either with or separately from the participant. 

• Scrapbooking or journalling - asking participants to keep a visual or written diary of their experience, which they can later share or report on. 

• Video-journaling - creating vlogs or short videos describing an experience.

When: many situations, for example, when you want to understand people’s physical and emotional interaction in a physical or digital space; when the project results in a creative output

See our case study from St Fagans Museum of National History, Wales, UK, for more insights into how creative mapping methods were used and combined with more conventional methods like interviews.

Read our case study on Outcome Harvesting and how we used it in an impact assessment of EuropeanaTech and the implementation of IIIF.