Visual Tools for Research Participants

It’s a nice idea but seems a bit vague. So how do you go about with these cards, is it part of a method?

I personally prefer a more ground up way of working by targeting a specific area or context for innovation, researching that by experiencing the actual issues with the participants in the form of a contextual inquiry, ethnographic approach or contextual probes research, and further including the participants in well structured focus groups or co-design sessions to get a lot of ideas from many perspectives.