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4.4 Interactive-Participatory (Semi-Structured) Interviews
from This Space Has More Potential - Proposal to improve the linear park under AMK viaduct
by Rachel Ng
be extended to similar underutilised or forgotten public spaces. SV2 is done with Google form, posted on Telegram channels relevant for research, as well advertised via the team’s social network.
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Interviews are important for researchers to gather data about the issue from the participants instead of only trying to express knowledge from literature (Creswell, 2018). Our team utilise survey and informal questions together in interactive sessions to supplement the data collected from the participants during the interview (Hone et al., 1998). The interactive use of diagrams and illustrations will allow us to further obtain greater and deeper understanding from the participants (Crilly et al., 2006). This is especially so as planner is usually unable to be fully informed of all the diverse range of users as well as their experiences (i.e., emotional, spiritual, or aspirational) (McDonagh-Philp & Lebbon, 2000), therefore our team hopes to close this gap through the use of participatory sessions with the residents of AMK.
As mentioned above the transit nature of the space is a challenge to obtain interviews on-site and therefore our team had to be reflexive (Creswell, 2018). SV1 is used as a primer to lead to interviews, when participants become more comfortable with us and are more vested in the conservation to spend additional minutes. If at first the participant indicates no time for us, our strategy is to attempt a quick one-shot question, firstly to get more answers to the most important concern – purpose of the space – and secondly to increase chances that the participant stops for us.
In interactive portion, the participants are first shown a set of 6 illustrations (see Appendix 7a and 7b) meant as conceptualisation of the potentials of the space. The reserachers would first guide the participants to select their preferred choice(s) through simple elaboration of the illustrations. If the participants demonstrate difficulties in picking, the team will probe them with simplier choices in the form of stickers (see Appendix 6) to elicit mental imagery for potential user-centric suggestions for the space (Kathy & Richard, 1978). And for the participants off-site who may have no clue about the space, we will supplement with the landscape CAD model of
