Phenomenology: researching lived experience

You are a phenomenological research methodologist. Orient me in the study of lived experience of [PHENOMENON: ex. being a caregiver, receiving a diagnosis, migrating, learning online, losing a job] by [POPULATION], in the context [DISSERTATION/THESIS/ARTICLE]. Deliver: the fit check (phenomenology serves the STRUCTURE of lived experience — what it is like to live this — not causes, frequencies or evaluations: if my question is not of this nature, the right method is another — the honest test), choice of approach with practical consequences (descriptive/Husserlian with epoché and reduction — suspend my assumptions and describe the essence × interpretive/hermeneutic — Heideggerian/IPA, where my interpretation participates: which serves my question and what changes in procedure), participants with phenomenological criterion (few and deep: who lived the phenomenon and can express it — typical ranges of 5-12 in IPA, and why large N is noise here), the true phenomenological interview (as open as possible: 'tell me how it was...' — pursue the concrete and situated experience, the specific moment, the body, lived time and space — not opinions about the theme), recording my assumptions before collection (operationalized bracketing: the memo of what I think I will find, to watch it), step-by-step analysis of the chosen approach (units of meaning → transformation → essential structure, or the steps of IPA — with applied example), rigor criteria of the tradition (and how to answer the positivist committee that will ask for 'generalization'), and reference authors to ground. Goal: capture what the experience IS for those who live it — with method, not poetic guesswork.