Seeing patterns in clouds…tag clouds

For a ongoing intranet consultancy project I undertook a set of stakeholder interviews as part of the research process. As we headed into the stage of assimilating the mass of gathered information - and there is a staggering amount of it - into a clear set of recommendations from observed patterns, I wondered if there was a way to visualise the interview content with the notion that it may enable further understanding.

Reading between the lines

To this end whilst wading through recordings of stakeholders, I converted them into tag clouds. Using TagCrowd, a Tag Cloud generator, I upped a transcript from each interviewee.

The resulting clouds, ignoring words like “oh”, “going”, “anyway”…,  whilst not scientific (and not the point) give an intriguing look at the content of the conversation, its themes and the ideas that are high, possibly subconsciously, on the interviewee’s agenda. It also made apparent common patterns across different interviewees.

As a supporting device I like them. Whilst independently inconclusive they give the designer a way to communicate, in an engaging visual way, to other people involved in the project the areas interviewees are gravitating towards.

The resulting images were  also well received by the client. I’m sure in part due to their simplicity. It is a diagram amidst dendrograms, tables of stats and other analysis that can be  easily digested and as such opens conversation.

Below are some of the generated tag clouds. I’ve blurred out a few client sensitive words.

^ Interviewee 1

^ Interviewee 2

^ Interviewee 3

Prospecting for gold

To compliment tried and tested formal methods I am an advocate of creative experimentation as part of this clarifying process. The willingness to peer into the problem without a clear route to the solution and knowing that it will take a bit of poking around, some dead ends but the chance of discovering something with value makes it worth pursuing. Having the time to do this however is difficult to manage which is why i think it is best done in the early stages of the process for two reasons. Firstly, if there is nothing springing from the well you can cut the activity and resolve solutions with existing methods. Secondly, the freedom from rationalised existing solutions helps to keep thinking expansive and experimental.

If you have applied existing approaches in unconventional ways or have made discoveries through serendipity post a comment.