Micro-narratives: A Scalable Method for Eliciting Stories of People’s Lived Experience

Engaging with people’s lived experiences is foundational for HCIresearch and design. This paper introduces a novel narrative elicitationmethod to empower people to easily articulate ‘micro-narratives’emerging from their lived experiences, irrespective of their writingability or background. Our approach aims to enable at-scale collectionof rich, co-created datasets that highlight target populations’voices with minimal participant burden, while precisely addressingspecific research questions. To pilot this idea, and test its feasibility,we: (i) developed an AI-powered prototype, which leveragesLLM-chaining to scaffold the cognitive steps necessary for users’narrative articulation; (ii) deployed it in three mixed-methods studiesinvolving over 380 users; and (iii) consulted with establishedacademics as well as C-level staff at (inter)national non-profits tomap out potential applications. Both qualitative and quantitativefindings show the acceptability and promise of the micro-narrativemethod, while also identifying the ethical and safeguarding considerationsnecessary for any at-scale deployments.