Examining the Use of Thematic Analysis as a Tool for Informing Design of New Family Communication Technologies

Frequently family members are geographically separated for large parts of the day. This separation, allied to a busy schedule, can make it difficult to share daily experiences and maintain the feeling of connectedness. This paper describes an exploratory study to investigate family dynamics and the use of technology in families with primary school children. We interviewed five families about their daily communication and use of technology. We examined the use of thematic analysis, a method for qualitative data analysis used in social science, as a tool for systematically identifying and describing features of qualitative data and informing the design of new family technologies. The results of the investigation showed that the first 3 phases of the 6-phase thematic analysis approach were the most fruitful in yielding information about the families’ use of technology and information at a level that could be of value for designing new communications technology. The use of the full 6 phases of the approach however, is more appropriate where it is required to produce a summary of the data in a form of a high level thematic map accompanied by the analytic narrative.