Narrative-Flip Method

A qualitative HCI research method in which participants first encounter a technology or artifact without knowing its origins or intent, reflect on it, and only afterwards are told its disability-led, activist, or political context. The deliberate before/after framing surfaces assumptions participants would not otherwise articulate and allows researchers to observe how meanings shift (or resist shifting) once the political context is revealed. Introduced by Jain et al. (CHI 2026) in an XR mouth-interface study, the method draws on critical design, prototyping, and reflective-learning traditions.