seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Egypt
seen from Australia
seen from Jordan
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Yemen
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seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from United States
seen from United States
THE MAGIC OF QUAL
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
- Roald Dahl
It’s a quote designed for qual researchers: We should always keep this mindset when doing research. Be open, be curious, be positive and believe in magic!
TAKING A 5 SENSES APPROACH
“As we sense we also make sense” (Vannini et al 2012)… and we do so with all our 5 senses.
We are animals. Rather than being primarily cognitive creatures, we experience the world in a multisensory way.
Yes, there is no doubt that how we interpret sensory information is culturally mediated, informed by history, education and social experience. But consider this: language has only been acquired at a relatively late state of our evolution.
"The senses are one of the most precious ways we have to learn about the world, and about ourselves. Most of us have hardly begun to harness their latent power.“ (Roman Krznaric)
I believe that we can connect more deeply when we embrace our ‘animal self’ in our work as qualitative researchers. And I aim to think and design in this spirit.
One of the big cruxes of ‘qualitative sensemaking’ is that we spend our lives knowing and understanding intuitively how human beings ‘tick’ … and then often end up spending a lot of time in the search for ‘appropriate’ deductions for what we know. Using multisensoric thinking gives room for greater diversity of readings here.
“Turning on our senses is a forgotten freedom we all possess, and can add new dimensions of meaning and experience to our lives.“ (Krznaric)
At PBI we only just have begun to broaden our thinking and doing in this field. Unlocking the latent powers of haptic thinking for example is one little step we take on this fascinating journey. Do you want to join us on this mission?
References:
This post was inspired by David Howes’ Keynote: ‘The race to embrace the senses in marketing: An ethnographic perspective’ at the 2012 EPIC conference in London
Krznaric, Roman (2011): How We Should Live – Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life (Bluebridge)
Vannini, D., Waskul, D. & Gottschalk, S. (2012) The Senses in Self, Society and Culture: A Sociology of the Senses, (Routledge)
