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D W E L L I N G W I T H D E S I G N
Interviews and
photographs
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The research data consists of 30 semi-structured theme interviews conducted
in the interviewees’ homes, most often with (only) one member
of the household. In hindsight, I think it is fortunate that I agreed to do the
interviews without all of the members of the household being able to (or interested)
participate in the research because the interviews are perhaps even more
focused on design and its role in the moral economy, whereas interviews with
the whole family might possibly have been more about the family relationships
than the products themselves.
The interviewees were asked to show and talk about the biographies of the
“designed functional products” in their homes. That the products have biographies
is a notion suggested by Igor Kopytoff (Kopytoff 1986). Silverstone and
his colleagues then adopted the idea for the purposes of domestication research
(Silverstone & Hirsch 1992 17).
My application followed the domestication model. I asked the interviewees
to outline when and why the product had been acquired, how it had been
used and displayed and whether it had been, for example, talked about during
its career in the household. In addition, I asked how often the products have
been changed or just moved around, in general about effort and time invested
into products, and about the products’ attempts to enter the home and “occupy”
private space. In doing this, I used as an example gifts and inherited items;
the interviewees responded by talking especially about gifts. Finally, I asked
the extent to which the particular household pays attention to media coverage
about design and interior decoration.
Since I did not use questionnaires or other means to keep the product biographies
balanced, some biographies are simple notions (“the furniture in this
room we inherited two years ago from my wife’s family and it has been here
all the time”), whereas some are much more detailed stories. Taken togeth-