They say the art of story telling is dead, but in terms of getting you closer to strong consumer insights, a story can still be a very powerful tool to use in concert with all the other consumer understanding tools such as observation, focus groups discussion, video diaries, pathmapping, protostorming etc. If you believe that in this era of video ethnography, one-to-one interviewing of consumers is still relevant (and I do), then getting your consumer to tell you a story about a subject is a great way to reveal their deepest feeling on the topic. Life’s experiences are remembered through stories and reviewing your consumers stories in a one-to-one interview can quickly and simply connect you with unmet and unarticulated consumer needs. If you get your consumer to prepare their story as a story board before your one-to-one interview, as the interviewer you also get an easy way to navigate the story and to track back to areas of particular interest.

A story board usually consists of an A3 sheet of paper onto which the consumer can stick cut-out pictures from a magazine or can draw pictures to illustrate their story. It doesn’t have to look fantastic (although some do) but it needs to support the story. Depending on the subject you want to research, you can start the storytelling task by asking the consumers to describe “the best” (e.g. the best shopping experience I ever had), “the last time” (e.g. the last time I had an indulgent hot drink), “the first time” (e.g. the first time I bought a TV), “Compare your ideal..with” (e.g. compare your ideal healthy food with the snacks you get in your vending machine), “the worst time” (e.g. the worst time I went to the cinema) or simply “tell me a one picture story about” (e.g. tell me a one picture story about a typical family mealtime). Usually, the story itself should be relatively quick to tell, but the interviewer will need to expand and explore interesting areas of the story. The story format can also be set around various time formats, such as, cyclical (e.g. daily, seasonal), event (e.g. holiday, birthday, weddings, special occasions) or stages (e.g. beginning, middle and end). During the interview, the interviewer (and obsever) should pay particular attention to the follow:

1. look out for conflicts, sacrifices or tensions that the consumer is experiencing, sometimes this will require probing

2. The visual layout of the story, look at the flow of the story and importantly, look for what is not shown. This can often be as important as what the consumer has chosen to show

3. the emotions in the story and delivery. Does the delivery match the emotional content, key into the emotions and probe areas which are particularly emotive

4. let the consumer go through the entire story first without interruption. Once the first cycle through the story is complete, you can go back to areas of particular interest.

I’m definitely not trying to put down other forms of research by focusing on story telling. What I’m doing is sharing a tool which I believe has significant value in the task of identifying powerful insights. In future posts, I’m planning to go through how you can take the outputs from your consumer research and condense and amplify the most important elements of it to create key consumer themes.