Timeline Drawing and the Online Scrapbook

Abstract

This article explores the use of two visual methods to facilitate elicitation of temporal data in a qualitative interview study—specifically, a timeline drawing activity and collaborative viewing of an interface for visualizing personal social media histories, the Online Scrapbook—for eliciting participants’ recollections and reflections upon their experience of chronic illness. This study makes a novel contribution in the use of an interactive, data-driven timeline based on social media participation to elicit personal reflections. Both elicitation techniques were effective for encouraging participants to tell their story and take a closer look at their own experiences in their respective ways. Whereas the timeline drawing activity gave participants the opportunity to share their illness experiences from their own perspective, the Online Scrapbook facilitated a multidimensional exploration of how participants interacted with their surrounding online and offline environments, enabled participants to revisit their past through their own digital artifacts, and supported a deeper exploration of participants’ information behaviors. The article examines how the timeline drawing activity and the Online Scrapbook viewing activity were used together in the same study to bring out the richness and complexity of the relationship between information behavior and health management, and facilitate a nuanced view of participants’ lives.