Collecting stories for a SenseMaker project has a variety of challenges. Most people we talk to don’t give enough consideration to their collection plan and assume their initial plans will work! Unfortunately that is not the case.
This archive contains audio-only interviews with seven people about nine different narrative projects in which they participated, either as QED Insight clients or as Laurie’s fellow SenseMaker practitioners.
A great pancake may still be lumpy
Marcus Guest is with Narrative Insights.
The first project described in this interview was done by a big four audit firm (e.g., Ernst & Young). The project, based in Russia, was for a governmental organization that wanted to understand the attractiveness to foreign entities of investing in the country.
The second project was sponsored by an NGO (non-governmental organization – neither part of the government not a for-profit company). They were very interested in understanding a certain region’s population.
Caring about Oregon
Nancy Knopf is with Care Oregon.
The goal of using SenseMaker and narrative research was to capture the community voice to help inform:
• ways to reduce health disparities; and
• ways to address preventive care practices based on personal experience.
Nancy describes their scribe-based collection process, including various twists and turns along the way to finishing the capture.
Cognitive cuisine: Would you like stories with that?
Nora Murphy is with TerraLuna Collaborative.
Working with school systems in the United States presents special challenges for connecting with teachers and administrators. In this project, Terraluna Collaborative needed to go through many iterations of reaching their respondents. In the end, the stories were collected, but the question remained if the cost was too high.
Optimizing non-optimal respondents
Jochum Stienstra is with Ferro Explore!.
Ferro Explore! uses many qualitative tools, including market research panels, as part of its approach. When combining SenseMaker® with a panel, a different tack needs to be taken to get quality responses from a less-engaged set of respondents.
The best storytelling may be social
Laurel Sutton is with Creative Cognicion.
The first project was focused on collecting stories to better understand people with depression along with those who they lived with and the therapists who helped. Collection was not going well until Laurel and her partners tried something different.
The second project was tied to a librarian leadership program for a widely dispersed group of people. Building on the experience in the first project, the same approach, slightly modified, was applied here. It worked very well.
Failure meets its match
Tamara Wall is with Desert Research Institute.
This project was about fire fighters who battle wild fires. The objective was to understand their perceptions of specific fires and the ways they responded to them. Tamara describes the challenges and how she finally got participation and stories.
Cold calls, warm responses
Laurie Webster is with QED Insight. (No link necessary, you’re already there.)
This business-to-business project was tied to ensuring the loyalty of high-spending customers. A combination of approaches was tried; some worked while others failed.