Dialoguing with Tangible Traces: A Method to Elicit Autoethnographic Narratives

Through this pictorial, I propose a generative method for the elicitation of autoethnographic themes for design research. This dialogue with tangible traces uses photography in conversation with tangible body maps (TBMs) towards harvesting evocative content for exploration. This dialogical tool functions as a way of generating conceptual knowledge inspired by the self and environment, including other subjectivities. This dialogue with tangible traces contributes to first-person design research, where traceability and communicability of outcomes become necessary preconditions for rigour. Although systematic, this method also respects the nonprescriptive and drifting nature of design.