Founded by Edmund Husserl (Ideas I, 1913), developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception, 1945), and made a step-by-step method by Amedeo Giorgi (The Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology, 2009).
Describes what an experience is like for the people living it, setting theories and explanations aside until the structure of the experience is down on paper.
When to reach for it
When the question is what something feels like from the inside, such as a first month as a manager or a first use of a product.
How it runs
- Name one concrete experience, bounded in time and place.
- Collect several long first-person accounts of it.
- Read each account whole, then mark the passages where something shifts.
- Describe each passage plainly, holding explanations back.
- Draw out the structure the accounts share.
Where it sits in SOLVE eX
Go to the source
- Ideas I (Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie), 1913
- Phenomenology of Perception, Gallimard, 1945
- The Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology: A Modified Husserlian Approach, Duquesne University Press, 2009