I was exposed to priming by Jodie Moule of Symplicit at this year’s Oz-IA. It’s essentially an exercise designed to engage people’s right-brain (creative) that allows examination of how people feel and their emotional experiences about a certain subject before engaging their left-brain (logical) and asking them to analyse an experience. Having a means of engaging with people and analysing their wants, needs, motivations, expectations and experiences in both ways ultimately means you get a richer understanding of their context.
I’ve been reviewing an organisation’s business analysis capability these last few weeks, so I felt that rather than do a standard interview, I would get people to do a priming exercise instead. I simply asked them to create a mind map — a collage of words and pictures — to describe themselves and their personal feelings and experiences in relation to their work environment.
Each person’s A4 page was quite different. Some approaching the task from a completely creative perspective, some logically setting out and categorising their thoughts and experiences. Some used colours. Some just used black pen on the white page. At the beginning of the interview we discussed their A4 page and they explained each of the different parts they had created. It was a surprising insight into their work context and revealed much of the emotion they feel — their pride in their job, their work conflicts with other areas, frustrations with process, and their relationships with their colleagues. After this discussion, we then went through the standard questions. Even through these I felt that the personal exercise had openned them up somewhat, their responses were a little more personal, a little more emotional, and a little more honest than I would have normally expected.
When undertaking any form of analysis of people and their context I can see priming as a tool I will continue to use — whether in order to create a good user-experience as an Information Architect or just as a consultant eliciting requirements and creating a business solution for a client. In the end, it’s all about helping people and if we can gain a more holistic understanding of them I’m all for that!
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6 November, 2009 at 9:28 pm |
[...] engaging people’s imagination and emotional brain centres to understand how people feel about their context of use, often the [...]