Petitmengin. Reverse-engineered from the Method section of Thinking with Sound (CHI ‘24).
What it is for
An interview technique that refuses the general answer. Instead of how did that feel, it asks for the specific properties of the experience: where it was located, how big, what direction, what texture, how long it lasted, when exactly it began.
The premise is that people cannot report their own experience directly, but they can be walked back into a single remembered moment and asked about its structure.
Why I need it
If the thesis claims something about embodied sensory experience, then “the participants said it felt immersive” is not evidence. This is the only method precise enough to produce the kind of description that claim requires.
It also does something thematic analysis cannot: TA finds patterns across people, this one gets resolution within one person’s single moment. They are not competitors — one is a gauge, the other is a fixture.
Cost
Slow. Very slow, and it takes real practice to run without leading the participant. Realistically this is a tool for two or three participants, used alongside TA rather than instead of it.
Untried.