Thesis Research
SENSORY CARDS: Fostering Empathy and Connection within Community Groups
PHASE 2
Participatory Research
Participatory research
Looking for more insights, and the opportunity to deepen my knowledge on human relationships and empathy-building mechanisms, I reached out to the psychology community. I conducted three co-creation workshops with psychologists at the CPPL – Centro de Pesquisa em Psicanálise e Linguagem, in Recife-Brazil.
Participants were asked to take part in a series of activities designed to help them express their knowledge in a way that was easy to understand and process. The goals were to gather information about the challenges individuals face when trying to connect with one another, and begin to imagine ways to build empathy and connection.
Storytelling techniques based on generative research and existing methods of sensory stimulation were used during the workshops. Could a sensory dialogic experience—one that could be experienced with our whole body—help individuals access their thoughts and feelings and better communicate with others?
Co-creation activities
ICEBREAKER
Participants were asked to choose one object from a collection and present themselves by saying their name, the kind of work they did, one or two keywords that described the object and how they related to that object.
This first activity was intended to introduce the participants to the concept of sensory storytelling by encouraging them to attribute meaning to objects, and it also helped the participants to connect and get to know a little more about each other in a playful way.
CREATING PERSONAS
With the intention of facilitating the visualization of relationship challenges, I asked each participant to create a persona that had difficulty relating to others. They were given an outline of a figure and a wide range of visual and tactile materials.
In order to generate as much subjective data as possible, the task was intentionally left open for interpretation and the participants were encouraged not to use words at this point.
IMAGINING RELATIONSHIPS
Once these personas had been created I introduced a scenario to the participants: the personas had to go on a car trip for twenty days.
The participants were asked to describetheir personas and imagine what kind of relationships and interactions the personas would develop in this trip.
ENVISIONING EMPATHY
For the final part of the workshop, participants were encouraged to imagine in which ways the personas could strengthen their relationship during that journey.
This activity was supported by the same collection of objects used in the beginning of the workshop. The participants were encouraged to use them to physically represent their ideas.
Insights
The persona activity was very effective in helping participants communicate abstract information. Since they were asked to create personas using only visual and tactile materials, they were forced to abstract what it means to have relationship issues and not use specific—sometimes restrictive—words. They were able to interpret the abstracted representations created by others and add new layers of complexity to the persona's description.
After analyzing and categorizing the objects chosen by the psychologists, I identify three main sets of objects that were seen as important when dealing with relationship challenges: objects that evoke relaxation, objects that initiate group activities and objects that start conversations. The psychologists emphasized, in different ways, the importance of conversations to foster connection, understanding and acceptance between individuals. They also expressed the value of an environment that helps people release their tensions and share moments of joy.
Through this participatory research it became even more evident that in order to help individuals to connect at a deeper level, we need to create opportunities for meaningful conversations to happen. In addition, it also affirmed the value of visuals and artifacts to help putting thoughts, feelings and emotions into words.