July 24

Qualitative inquiry focuses on the processes that define and direct our lived experience. Those processes are not static. There are many interdependent and moving parts. To truly diagnose and represent patterns that shape everyday life, we need diagnostic and representational strategies that are as dynamic as the topics we study.

Employing visual strategies invites thinking through conceptual puzzles. We create “think aloud” spaces that allow us to entertain possibilities and provide a way for us to play with data and brainstorm different directions to explore at any stage of project design, data collection, analysis and presentation of our ideas, findings, and claims. In this way, “play” is cast as a necessary intellectual activity that unearths powerful claims that more accurately represent the lived experiences of the people who generously share their stories, energy, thoughtfulness, and time.

In this course, rather than introduce templates to use in any qualitative project, we demonstrate how and why we adapt our visual strategies, which we call “diagramming,” to fit our projects. As we move through our qualitative projects, we diagram as a way to “get a good view” of topics, dimensions and characteristics that help us assess the detail and nuance of individual ideas and the ways core ideas integrate. Diagramming techniques help us solidify our understanding of our projects as we interrogate ideas we had entering our work and assist our ability to unearth unanticipated ideas and connections between them. Diagramming can also help us create figures, tables, models and more that we can include in our published work and presentations.