The future of questions

Everyone likes to make predictions as one year closes and another begins with fresh hopes, although fewer go back to check what they said previously (with some notable exceptions). Rather than make predictions, most of which are guaranteed not to happen, I would like to share a hope for how market research can reinvent itself for the future. In sharing my hope I can also share some of the changes that I believe will happen at some time in the near future (I would never be confident enough to say that it will be in 2012).

My big wish is that market research can start to get beyond its obsession with questions. Read more »

“Culture is the collective programming of the mind.”  - Geert Hofstede

A world of symbols

What makes us all so interesting to researchers and marketers is our enquiring mind, and nothing shows this more vividly than the web of beliefs and ideas that we have created to make meaning from the complexity of the world around us. A very important part of this framework is the vocabulary of signs and symbols that help remind us of our link to the world and each other. Read more »

“God created man in order to tell stories.” – Hasidic saying, quoted by Franz Kafka

Where did stories start?

In The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker charts the history of stories and where he believes that they have gone wrong in the last 200 years, after outlining seven archetypal plots in detail with a rich array of examples. It’s a long and fantastic read, despite some flaws, which will enrich anyone interested in stories in any form (for example, there are many movie examples). Read more »

“To express yourself as you are is the most important thing.”  - Shunryu Suzuki

Bathhouse presentations

In his latest book on presenting, Garr Reynolds urges presenters to get naked and focus on the natural behaviour which can help establish a personal connection with an audience despite the technology, tools and effects which can sometimes create a barrier between you and others.  This means being direct, honest and clear with your audience, focusing on the core of your message and stripping away unnecessary distractions and irrelevant information, in the same way that we all stood up for our ‘show and tell’ at school without the encumbrance of powerpoint and other distractions. Read more »

“All models are wrong, some models are useful.”  - George Box

The flaw of averages

Market research reports are generally packed full of average scores and comparisons of means, and not often enough with distributions and extremes.  In the real (business) world this is a mistake as, in the words of Sam Savage’s (f)law of averages, ‘plans based on average assumptions are wrong on average’.  To put this another way, errors occur in the real world when we replace uncertain numbers by single (or simple) averages. Read more »

Learning the research alphabet

There are clear lessons for market research (and marketing which I will explore in separate posts) from the importance of affect, behaviour and context in understanding ourselves and our customers.  I am writing this listening to Bill Evans and Tony Bennett, so it seems appropriate to argue that research needs to become more VOCAL. Read more »

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.  Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”  - Herbert Simon

Do you need more information?

How much can information can the world use?  It can certainly create a great deal of information according to a study by Martin Hilbert at the University of Southern California, but the ability to create and even store more and more information is not the same as the ability to understand, synthesise and communicate the information.  I believe this is one of the most important issues we face today, both as content producers and as content consumers with increasing competition for our limited attention.   Read more »

Pulling the trigger

Have you ever had the experience that something was on the ‘tip of your tongue’ but you couldn’t quite remember?  That’s likely because you know the information exists, but you can’t quite find the right connection to trigger its recall.  That’s why such memories sometimes come back later when triggered by a more relevant (but often random) stimulus. Read more »

Apple must have been relieved to have Steve Jobs back (if briefly) for their latest new product introduction (iPad 2).  Although he looked a little frail, he still commanded the stage, using presentation skills that all researchers can also use, including many tricks from Hollywood.  In The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Carmine Gallo summarises these skills in three acts (like all the best plays and presentations). Read more »

“Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself.”  - Donald Norman Read more »