SenseMaker

What is it? | How does it work? |Who’s used it & how have they benefited? | How much does it cost?

 What is it?
SenseMaker® (from Cognitive Edge) is a unique approach to surveying large numbers of people in complex environments. It is informed by principles of behavioural psychology, in particular the idea that people are social animals who naturally share information by telling ‘stories’.

SenseMaker® allows real-time access to large amounts of deeply informative qualitative and quantitative data, using specialised software to help detect patterns. This data can be used to understand the attitudes, views, concerns, wishes, etc. of groups of people such as company employees, community members, power holders, customers and service users.  

In a supply chain context, it can offer employers of factory and farm workers (and their customers) valuable, real-time insight into workers’ views. This can be used to make decisions and plan initiatives that are more likely to work because they are based on what workers genuinely think and feel.

For brands and retailers the approach enables a deeper and more accurate insight into complex social issues than traditional audits, and can feel less threatening to their suppliers than a traditional employee satisfaction type of survey.

How does it work?
Interviewees share a true story describing a situation they have experienced, in response to an open-ended prompt question that sets out the parameters for the study, such as, “Tell me a story about a time when you felt encouraged or discouraged by an experience at your workplace”.  Respondents then answer questions about the story (eg what is the story about, who was involved, how did it make you feel, who had the most power/knowledge/will?).

These questions are asked using visual tools that prompt people to think deeply before answering, producing a view that is more genuinely ‘through their eyes’ than when filtered through the researcher’s lens. In the examples below, respondents are asked to move the dot to the part of the triad or dyad that most closely matches their story, or to a point between the extremes if it was a combination of factors.

The SenseMaker® software instantaneously synchronises and visualises answers, transforming them into accessible quantitative and qualitative data which decision-makers can use to plan timely responses to early signs of problems or emerging issues.

In contexts where stories can be gathered at regular intervals or continuously, managers and policy- and decision-makers can observe change as it happens and can develop strategies to respond to early signs of problems or of things that are going well and should be preserved and built on.

Who has used it and how have they benefited?
SenseMaker® is widely used by governments, UN agencies, international banks, development organisations and many others to deepen understanding of a wide range of complex social issues.

In 2016, I worked with the Ethical Trading Initiative and Oxfam on a project using SenseMaker® to gather women’s views on their working conditions in farms and factories after years of ethical trade intervention. It drew out results that years of audits and traditional surveys had missed.

For example, the Programme Manager was surprised at the number of stories that emerged relating to sexual harassment; “What we were surprised about… is not the fact that sexual harassment exists in the sector, but more that women workers have shared openly these stories. Normally, they do not talk about that since they feel ashamed.”

Read my full ETI blog on the Morocco study 

How much does it cost?
Costs vary according to the scale of the study, but are comparable with traditional field research involving large numbers of interviews, with some additional software licensing costs.

Please contact me to discuss your particular needs.