interview reaction cards

The next couple of months I'll be busy teaching and co-ordninating the bachelor-course Tekst, produksjon og analyse (text, production and analyses). My aim for the autumn is to do quite a few interviews as well. I definitely need to start talking to youngsters as I claim that my research concerns their use of various communication media. After listening to PhD-student Mikael Norén's presentation in Örebro yesterday, I wonder whether I should try to include reaction cards to my interviews. It's sounds really simple, but I don't know if it's appropriate in my project, as these cards are usually used within usability studies. In short, interviewees are asked to pick word-cards that they find fitting for a specific web-site (from words such as clean, clear, effortless, efficient, time-consuming, unattractive and like another 100 words). Then they are asked to explain how they understand these words and why they chose the cards they did. I would of course have to choose words appropriate for my project. The method is developed by Microsoft Usability Lab, but I can't hold that against an interesting way of doing research and initiating reflections in interview situations.

The cards are of course not used to direct interviewees "my way". My goal with using such cards would be to inspire the informants. And playing cards is fun. Of course, the situations will be quite different from exploring questions of usability. Maybe I don't need the cards: it might suffice to ask informants to associate and suggest words themselves, and then ask them to explain why and how. Or maybe I can introduce the cards in situations where informants struggle to answer questions? I'm thinking as I write, and it might just be a bad idea. But I'm curious of how it would work.