Interview

'What does the way someone decorates their living space tell you about them.' This was the topic I chose to carry out an interview on. I got together with a group of girls in my Textiles class where we all brainstormed some ideas for the interview questions. Some headings which we came up with were, Generation, Influences, Space, Colour co-ordination, Use/sustainabilty and Taste. We thought that maybe Age or Childhood would play a big part in the way people decorate their space. The choice of decorations could be influenced by many things such as friends and family or TV, Magazines or personal interest. We thought this would be very suitable for finding out about someones personality.


Writing my own questions for the interview was quite hard as I had to word it in a way so that I wouldn't get a one word answers and had to make sure that the interview flowed. We were asked to make a semi structured interview which meant that I could add in questions if something interesting popped up during the interview. I asked a variety of age groups to try and get the sense of 'Generation' and time. These age groups varied from early 20's to someone in their 70's and were of both gender.



An interesting interview was of a couple who stayed in the same house. I asked the same questions to both people and the answers reminded me of Jonathan Baldwin's Lecture on 'Taste'. He did this little experiment on 2 people who got asked the same questions with the other out the room, The male gave short answers whereas the female would go into detail such as ' I have a comfy sofa with big fluffy cushions' My interview with the couple was also interesting as they both had similarities in their answers but different views on their living space. For example they both thought their house was homely, relaxed and comfortable but they differed in answers when I asked what their favourite item in the house was. The male said 'iPhone' which is related to technology and female said 'her wedding ring' or washing machine for practical reasons. She also mentioned she didint like technology in the sense of computers and phones. This shows that there is a balance in consumption as people buy to consume the latest and some buy for practicality. 'The culture of Design' by Guy Julier refers to consumption to 'need' and 'want' which relates to my interview of consumers buying because they 'want' something(iPhone) and buying because they 'need' something(washing machine)



The idea of taste can be influenced by generation or by Childhood experiences. In a few of my interviews when I asked the participants about the colour co-ordination of their space and why they colour co-ordinated, they said it looked nice and it was influenced by their parents. One male said there was no colour co-ordination at all in his childhood home but mentions that his Friends decorate their homes in the same way as his current home. This may mean that his taste has been influenced by the people around him therefore colour co-ordination became a theme throughout his house. In my interviews I also asked how they came about decorating their place whether they used Magazines or watched decorating programmes on Tv and a lot said they looked at magazines for inspiration and one interesting lady said she used mood boards and swabs of colours on different walls to see what they would look like in different lights. This was to do with her personal interests as she mentioned she was a collector of antiques which was the main theme throughout the house. She decorated her space accordingly to her ornaments and furniture. She was influenced by antiques as a child where she developed her own style and refered to magazines for ideas. The collection of these antiques shows that she does not consume new products, the sense of sustainabilty is captured here as old furniture or ornaments have stood the test of time.