Introducing hermeneutic phenomenology to digital research methods: the qualitative-phenomenological walkthrough and its application to researching hardware and their interfaces

This article attends to what is termed a qualitative-phenomenological walkthrough. As much research no longer abides by the strict confines to remain ‘objective’, methodologies in academic study have been innovating with addressing researcher subjectivities and using them to reflect on personal experiences. Critically, identities can be used as variables within a research context. The method has been developed in order to access hardware as a socio-political site of research, analysing how it mediates our experiences as a non-neutral actor. I begin by identifying the qualitative-phenomenological walkthrough’s roots in a variety of other research methodologies that have been used under queer contexts. As the portmanteau implies, the term ‘qualitative-phenomenological walkthrough’ derives from (hermeneutic) phenomenology, the walkthrough method, and to some extent, autoethnography. From the hardware to the software – the keyboards, mice, screens, mobile phones, interfaces, operating systems, the immediate offline space, and everything in between – is considered.