The best questions about stories

This is another "came up in conversation" post, based on several recent conversations about asking people to reflect on stories they have just told. At this point I've seen people ask questions about stories (and then watched the responses come in) more than a few dozen times, and some fairly predictable patterns are starting to form. I've observed four dominant factors that make the difference between strong, clear, useful answers to questions about stories and weak, messy, can't-do-much-with-them answers. The best story collections get these four things right.

1. Ask questions that matter and resonate.

Find questions that want to be asked. Don't just pull out a standard list: think more deeply, more emotionally, more aspirationally. Think about what you want to achieve with your project -- its fondest hopes and dreams -- and find questions those dreams want to ask. Pretend you are sitting with the stories and answers. In a perfect world, what do they tell you? Then come at it from the other side: what do your storytellers have to say, want to say, need to say? If you can't guess, collect some unadorned stories before you design any questions about them. Find the place where what you need to hear and what needs to be said come together.

2. Transmit your excitement and energy.

You are doing your narrative project because you hope to achieve some goal that is important to you. What is it about that goal that moves you the most? Does that excitement come through in your questions? Do your questions, as a whole, feel like a contribution to something positive and helpful, or do they feel like a tax form? If you can't tell, try your questions out on anyone you can find who is in your group of interest. Watch their face as they look over the questions. Are your questions communicating your energy to them?

3. Avoid conflation.

One of the worst destroyers of answers to questions about stories is conflation: answers that mean "I feel this way" mixed indistinguishably together with answers that mean "I couldn't find the answer I wanted so I picked this instead." Badly conflated answers usually have to be thrown out because they cannot reveal useful patterns.

The best antidote to conflation is pilot testing of questions. When that is not possible, I use and suggest a simple exercise to detect possible conflation. It goes like this. First, make a list of people with widely varying backgrounds and personalities. It's best if they are in the group of people you will be asking to tell stories, but if that's not possible, just consider people you know or remember. They can even be fictional or historical. The important thing is that they be varied in their perceptions.

Now that you have some people in mind, take your question list and mentally picture each person answering the questions. On each question that has predefined answers, picture the person with their pencil hovering over the possible answers to the question. Is there an answer for that person? Do they find something that works for them? If they can't find an answer, what can you do to help them answer the question? You can also multiply the people by situations and picture them telling stories that come out well and poorly, and so on. When you get to the point where everyone can find an answer in every situation, you have a good set of answers.

 4. Use your precious cognitive budget wisely.

Your cognitive budget is the limited amount of time, attention, mental energy, and patience your storytellers are willing to give you. It's almost always far, far smaller than you would like it to be. Your goal is to have your storytellers use as much of the cognitive budget as possible on telling the story and reflecting on it. Think of it like one of those charity reports that tell you how much of your money is going directly to the people being helped. Reduce your administrative overhead to the minimum. Every time someone spends more than a few seconds on a question trying to puzzle out what you want, you have lost some of their priceless narrative reflection.

Here are some of the worst cognitive budget wasters.

Too many questions. This one is of course the grand-daddy of all cognitive budget wasters. Face it: people aren't going to be as prolific with their answers as you would like them to be. But if you don't meet people where they are, you will waste what they do have to give you. It's kind of like that joke about fighting with your spouse: do you want to be right or do you want to be married? Do you want perfection or do you want stories?

The general rule here is: ask three questions, plus two multiplied by your interest level. Rate the interest level like you would a hot sauce: from mildly interested (one) to wildly interested (five). If you are standing in a shopping center accosting people with a clipboard, ask three questions per story, because you can expect a zero rating on the mild-to-wild scale, and beyond three questions you will get little of any utility. If you are running a kiosk, they stopped didn't they, so that's a minimum one rating, so ask five questions per story. As the interest level you expect goes up, keep adding questions.

You can guage interest by knowing your storytellers well and by testing your questions. If this is impossible, you can hedge your bets by making some of the questions optional. This means separating the questions into groups and offering them in stages. Ask the most important ones first, then say something like "if you are done answering questions for this story, you need not fill these in" or "these questions are optional" or "would you please answer these additional questions?" or some such thing. The optional-stages route puts more of a burden on cognitive budget, so you should only do it if your storytellers are extremely varied or there is no way you can guess at what they will answer (and you need as many answers as you can get). A combination of knowing and testing is the better way.

Too many answers. For multiple choice answers, the number of possible answers you should provide follows the same rule as the number of questions: three plus two times your interest level. When a question has too many answers, people either ignore the last ones or ignore the whole question. I've seen questions with too many answers where the first three answers are disproportionately chosen. This usually does not mean those answers are best; it means people looked at the long list, said "ugh" to themselves, and truncated it for you (but each in their own way!). The result is muddied patterns and thrown-out questions.

Note that above I said having too few answers to a question can be a problem, because people can't find the answers they need in the list. This seems like contradictory advice, and it is! You need both accuracy and brevity, and you need to find the best balance between them.

Answers that are too similar. Question designers sometimes try too hard and design overly fine-grained answers. For example, if you are asking "when did this story happen," how much resolution do you need? Do you need to distinguish between events that happened six months and a year ago? When I'm looking over answers I often find random assignments when the meanings of answers are too close together. People rarely have the time or energy to make precise distinctions between feelings. It may sound useful to differentiate between whether people told a story "to explain" or "to inform" but storytellers often will not want to slice things so finely.

An exercise that works here is to explain the differences between answers to yourself (or in a group). If the explanation is long or confusing, maybe you don't need two separate answers. Justify each small difference. For example, say you have "frustrated" and "irritated" in your answers to your "how do you feel" question. Why do you need both of those? What situations are you trying to separate? Do they need to be separated? Do you want to use some of your cognitive budget on having people assign their feelings to those small categories? (Sometimes such a fine division is necessary; if so, be sure to free up some budget from somewhere else to make room for it.)

Nowhere to put non-response responses. This can be a point of pride: sometimes the people designing questions do not want to admit (even to themselves) that those responding may not want to choose an answer. Admit to yourself that sometimes, for some people, they will not have an answer, or will not want to think hard about it, or will not want to tell you what they really think.

My favorite example of this was on a project where we were doing a pilot story collection to test some questions. On the "how do you feel about this story" question, most of the respondents chose the answer "good." They did this for all sorts of stories, from the mundane to the catastrophic. What happened was, not seeing a non-committal option, they decided that "good" was the non-committal option. The clear message was that for this particular set of people telling stories about this particular topic, some of them needed a way to say "I'd rather not tell you that." When we added that answer to the questions, the utility of the story collection improved. Some of the worst misfires I've seen were ones where respondents could not find a place to put non-responses and muddied up the real responses with them.

Inconsistency or poor grammar. I know this sounds silly, but trivial things like subjects and verbs that don't agree, such as "How long ago does the events in this story take place" can stop people up. (One of the worst offenders is the non-question with a question mark at the end, such as "Please rate this story?") Or, say you start out your questions with first-person questions like "I live in..." and then three questions later switch to second-person questions like "How old are you?" You'd be amazed by how much this sort of thing can derail people. Be ridiculously consistent in how you ask your questions. Snags in the flow of the question-answering conversation waste cognitive budget.

Be careful here: once you've been iterating on a question set for a while it all begins to seem perfectly logical even if it isn't. Try your questions out on somebody you can watch, and see where they pause and ponder. Where does their pencil hover? Is it because they are thinking about the story, or because they are trying to figure out what you mean? Increase the former and reduce the latter.

Not being skim-ready. Yes, you know every nook and cranny of your question set; but your storytellers will be skimming it. (Another blow to our precious pride.) A common problem is to write a question like this: "How much do you..." When people are skimming and encounter a question like that, they have to look at the answers to find out what the question is about. Memorize this fact: people don't look at the answers. They skim the questions, and then they come back to the answers, when they think the questions are worth answering.

For this reason, each question has to stand on its own. It has to communicate the intent of the question with or without the answers. The same thing holds for the answers -- they must stand alone as well. Yes, I am actually saying that people forget what question they are answering while looking at the answers to that question. (All who have done this and marked the wrong answer in consequence raise their hands.... Now I have to go back to typing....) So the above question should say "How much do you like ice cream?" And then the answers should say "I like ice cream a lot" and so on. The rule is: don't make people grope for context. That wastes cognitive budget.

Confusing question order. Order your questions like a conversation. Make them flow naturally. If you were asking someone questions in person, which would you start with? Having to switch gears or answer questions in an order that doesn't seem natural wastes cognitive budget.

One thing I've found is that the "how do you feel" question likes to be asked right after the story is told. Doing this also sets the stage for the questions that come after it. It communicates to the storytellers that you will be asking them to think about their personal feelings about the story, not asking them for facts and figures. In general, the further away you get from the story the less vivid their emotions about it will be, so it is often best to ask the more factual questions later. Asking factual questions first can put people into classification mode and reduce their emotional response where you need it most.

Cultural confusion. The issue of whether your storytellers are "educated" is important in asking them questions about stories. By "educated" I don't mean smart or well-informed. I mean something closer to cultural homogeneity, more like "educated about the way people usually ask questions in surveys." Social scientists are used to throwing around precise terms, graphs, scales, ratings, and other social constructs, and sometimes they forget that not everybody is equally used to these things. For example, if your storytellers are not academic scientists, the question "How do you feel about this story?" is far superior to "Please rate your emotional intensity with respect to this story." And if they are academic scientists, the latter version will probably work better than the more conversational, candid, personal form. Think about the mindset of your storytellers and meet them where they are.

And be consistent: don't mix casual statements like "I like my work" with more formal statements like "I am satisfied with my current situation." The answers you write are the storyteller's part of the conversation. If you give them a voice that consistently matches what they would really say if they were speaking to you, they will be more likely to find answers they can choose, and they will waste less time finding them.

Happy question asking, everyone!

Transparency in story listening: when to say what

In a conversation the other day the issue came up of what to tell people about a story project in the planning stages. That got me thinking that I have not yet written about the issue of transparency in story listening projects. What should you tell people when you want them to tell you stories?

There are four categories of information you could potentially give the people you will be asking to tell stories in your project.

1. You could tell people what the project is for: why you are doing the project, what you hope to achieve, whom you are trying to help, how they can help you achieve your goal, what you would like them to do to help, and what you would like them not to do.
2. You could tell people who is involved in the project: its funders (who is paying for it), beneficiaries (who will gain from its success), collectors (interviewers, compilers, researchers), and storytellers.
3. You could tell people why you want to hear stories: the benefits of narrative inquiry, why you chose it over other methods, what it means about what they should do, what a story is and isn't, which stories are most useful, and what they can do to help you collect better and more useful stories.
4. You could tell people what will happen to the stories: who will see or hear them, how much identifying information will be associated with them, how long they will be kept, in what form they will be kept, and in what way  their distribution will be limited or protected. (You should always have a privacy policy, so the issue is not what you are prepared to say but what information you volunteer.)
   

Whether giving your storytellers each of these pieces of information helps or hinders your project depends on a lot of things about you, your storytellers, and the project. Here I'll consider some favorable and unfavorable conditions for transparency in each of the four possible areas of disclosure.

Telling people what the project is for

When should you tell people why you are doing the project? Two issues matter here.

• Do your storytellers care about the subject matter of the project? How does it register on their radar: as a tiny blip of triviality or a giant submarine? Does it matter to them? Is it something they think of often? Have they declared their interest in the topic by joining a group or taking some other committing action? How much do you know about their interest in the topic?
• Will your storytellers think they will benefit if the project succeeds? Do they see themselves (or the people or issues they care about) as one of the project's beneficiaries? Or do they consider it to be something about other people and for other people?

If the people you are asking to tell stories are likely to see the project as important and beneficial, they are more likely to contribute if you explain why you are doing it and what you hope to accomplish. You energy and excitement will combine with theirs in a synergistic collaboration. On the other hand, if your storyteller  consider the project to be trivial and irrelevant, explaining the project's goals may reduce their wilingness to contribute.

Two contrasting examples:

1. A standard example of a project in which you do not want to disclose a lot of information about goals is in market research. Most customers of products, unless the products are critical to life and happiness, don't much care about product improvement, and they see the benefits to their own lives as trivial. Trying to convey your enthusiasm for improving your shampoo will only turn people away. But hold on -- for some products there are some people for whom the rules are reversed. For many software products, for example, there is a small percentage of users who not only use the software but also improve it, usually by building things that rely on it: macros, templates and so on. These people usually do have enthusiasm for the product and will be more likely to contribute if you tell them about your goals. (That doesn't mean you should rely entirely on what they say, because their experiences are not the same as other users' and they are after all only a small portion of the whole group.)
2. An example of a project in which disclosing goals may be useful might be when the storytellers have already proclaimed their support. Say you want to hear about some of the experiences donors to your charity have had. You are more likely to get useful insights from their stories if you tell them you are trying to improve how their money is spent (or whatever your goal is) than if you don't tell them that. In this case people care about the project (they must, because they care about giving you their time and/or money), and they are likely to see the project as beneficial to themselves, since it increases the value of their contributions. The only caveat here is to be clear when you explain your goals to enthusiastic participants. You don't want people to meet you halfway to somewhere you hadn't meant to go.

Many projects include groups of both types at once. For example, say you gather stories about a software application from designers, product managers, salespeople, technical support staff, and customers. Importance and benefit will decrease (and grow in variability) as you move across the firm-public boundary. It is reasonable to give different groups of storytellers different information about the project, unless you expect the groups to compare notes.

There are two special classes of projects in which revealing your project's goals in detail can be fatal, and both have to do with change.

1. Is your goal to change your organization? If so, giving your storytellers a lot of information about your goal may cause some of them to direct their responses in such a way as to apply pressure in directions they want your organization to go. You want the authentic voice of experience, not a campaign of opinion.
2. Is your goal to change people? Are you trying to teach them something, or open their minds to new ideas, or find ways to convince them of things, or enlighten them? If so, it's best not to reveal that. Some people will try to prove how perfectly they are doing what you want them to do; some will try to prove you can't budge them; and some will simply walk away. In cases like this it's better to reveal little about the project (and to ask your questions as obliquely as possible so your intent cannot be easily guessed).

What should you say when you cannot reveal the purpose of the project? There are two things you can say.

1. Say nothing. Just say "We'd like to ask you some questions about your experiences with X." This is most often possible when the subject matter is trivial or people trust the groups doing the project. If you think many of your storytellers will turn away at this or will demand an explanation, see option two.
2. Describe a legitimate secondary purpose. Develop a reasonable story that explains why you might need to collect stories; then make that story true. Having a legitimate secondary purpose is not the same as lying about why you are doing the project, because your secondary purpose may actually be quite useful. The best solution is to find a secondary purpose that aids you in fulfilling your primary purpose but is easy to disclose information about. For example, if your primary purpose is to change minds about an issue, tell people you are collecting stories to put on your web site in order to stimulate discussion about the issue. Then do that. Do it as well and completely as if it were the only purpose for the project, and your primary purpose will be fulfilled as well.

Telling people who is involved in the project

How much you should tell people about the groups involved in the project depends on the feelings you expect to find about each group. Ask yourself:

1. What is the narrative distance between the storytellers and the different groups of people involved in the project? Do they feel those groups share their values? Do they feel they live in the same worlds? Do they share a context? If people feel another group is similar to themselves, telling them that group is involved might increase their willingness to contribute. Conversely, it can be helpful not to mention groups when you expect storytellers to be uncomfortable on hearing about them being involved. For example, say you are asking customers and employees about customer satisfaction; you might get better results if you don't tell each group of storytellers about the other. But if you are asking people from around the world about healthy eating, it might be motivating to find out about the other groups of storytellers.
2. What is the value perception of the storytellers toward each group? Do the storytellers see them as friendly, indifferent or hostile? Do they interpret their actions and statements as truthful and honorable, or do they suspect lies? Do they expect positive or negative news about them? Do they trust or distrust them? One little mental exercise to do here is to pretend (to yourself) that you are telling someone from one group that the other group is involved in the project. What is their reaction? Do they screw up their face? Do they roll their eyes? Do they get up and leave the room? Or do they lean forward and ask what they can do to help?
3. What is the power relationship among the project's sponsors, collectors, beneficiaries and storytellers? If people feel subservient to, or at the mercy of, or hoping from attention from another group, the stories they tell will change. Similarly, if the people you are asking to tell stories feel that another group is beneath them, or beneath consideration, the stories will change. 

Two contrasting examples:

1. Let's say you want to ask patients at a hospital to talk about their experiences. You can expect your storytellers to vary widely in their educational backgrounds and socioeconomic status; thus you could expect the degree of narrative distance between storytellers, sponsors and collectors to be variable. Some patients might feel dependent on the hospital, and might say whatever they think will get them better treatment or attention. Most will probably see the hospital as beneficial, but some might harbor resentment if things have not gone well with their treatment. In this case I would say fairly little about who is funding the study, who is collecting the stories, and who else is telling stories. I wouldn't hide this information; I just would't volunteer it prominently. If you make a big deal about the project's sponsors and story collectors, it might alter the stories you collect.
2. A contrasting example might be a project where you wanted to ask experienced, award-winning engineers to help you build a company-wide knowledge base about some intricate technical process. In this case the sponsors, collectors, storytellers and beneficiaries would all reside within the same firm. You could expect value perceptions to be fairly high and uniform. Narrative distance would be uniform and relatively low. If there were many new employees the power relationship could be a problem, but let's say your storytellers, because they are experienced, are established in their careers and not likely to worry about saying the right thing. For this type of project I would supply plentiful information about who is involved in the project. In fact such information might play a part in helping convince the busy engineers to set aside the time to contribute. 

Telling people why you want to hear stories

You can give your storytellers information on why stories in particular are useful to you. I've seen a range from giving a micro-seminar on the power of narrative inquiry to not even using the word "story." When to tell people about this varies according to a few factors.

1. Are your storytellers curious? Some people are naturally curious about methods and ideas, and some make a living from it. If you are asking a group of research scientists to tell you stories, giving them details about why stories reveal greater ground truths than direct questioning will probably get them more enthused to participate. Writers, journalists, teachers, and other generalists are also likely to get excited by learning how and why you are collecting stories. However, there are many valuable and wonderful people who just don't think that way. I once had a workshop full of secretaries nearly screaming at me because I took up their time explaining why stories were useful. When your audience is not likely to want to hear "more, more" about narrative inquiry, say nothing or keep explanations to a minimum.
2. Are your storytellers busy? If they can give you only a little time, you will need to keep your comments on the wonders of narrative very brief, even if other factors are favorable. (Reference the screaming secretaries story above.)
3. Are your storytellers expert in some area? If so, they are not likely to want to learn about narrative inquiry unless it touches on their field of expertise. There are exceptions, but many people who consider themselves expert in some area (especially if they are in positions of authority) are not willing to be "lectured to" on any subject, even if it would be helpful to the project.
4. Are your storytellers eager to help? The more excited you can expect your storytellers to be about why the project is being done, what's in it for them, and who is doing the project, the more likely they will want to hear about narrative inquiry, because they will want to help in the most effective way they can.  

Two contrasting examples:

1. Say your company has a highly technical software product that was created solely for in-house use. The software is primarily used by people in the company's research division. You have chosen to ask research interns (who have just started using the software within the past six months) to tell you about their experiences using it, because you want to ease the learning curve. You can expect most of these science-trained interns to be naturally curious, not overwhelmingly busy, interested in the project, open to learning new things, likely to see something good in participating (a good mark on their record, at least), and excited about working at the company. It would make sense in this case to expand your explanation of narrative inquiry, at least by a bit. For this group it would also be useful to range more widely in terms of workshop methods, storytelling exercises, more complex questions, and other processes that require storytellers to work with you.
2. A contrasting project might be one where you are looking to understand the qualities of effective leadership. You have arranged to conduct a number of half-hour lunch-time phone interviews with prominent executives in government and corporate offices. Your storytellers are busy, important and expert. Curiosity and willingness to help will vary but is likely to be far lower than in the case with the interns. These people already have many goals, and yours is not likely to be high up on their list. In this case it is best not to bother these people with long explanations about your methods. Just get to the stories and let them talk.

How do you say as little as possible about narrative inquiry while still getting people interested in participating? My favorite thing to say is, "We can find out about [this] and [this], but we want to know what [this] is really like. For that we need to know what has happened to you, in your own words." I find that people respond well to this brief statement, because everybody knows that standard measurements often miss a lot. It rings true, and you don't have to say any more than that for people to move on to the storytelling.

But having said that, a caveat. Everyone needs to find their own way to explain this. I went through a lot of messy explanations and yawning audiences before I came up with what works for me, and it almost certainly will not be what works for you. Other people I know say all sorts of other things. The best way to whittle down the explanation is to explain it to everyone you meet, watch how they react and what they react to, and keep making it more concise and more packed with meaning.


Telling people what will happen to the stories

To repeat what I said above (because it's important): contributors to any narrative project have a right to expect and demand full disclosure of your privacy policy. However, whether you should volunteer this information will vary based on your project and storytellers.

What matters most here is the perceived danger of the project to the storytellers, which depends on these factors:

1. What is the narrative distance between the storytellers and the project's sponsors, collectors and beneficiaries? 
2. What is the value perception of the storytellers toward these groups? 
3. What is the power relationship among them? As you may have noticed, the factors used to decide how much to tell about the groups involved come into play here as well. High narrative distance, low value perception, and wide power differentials all contribute to a perception of danger in storytelling. 
4. Is your topic personal or highly emotional? If you are asking people about Coke and Pepsi, even if they are distrustful they will probably not care much about what you do with their stories. But if you are asking people to tell stories about, say, the behavior of their family members, people are likely to need some reassurance before opening up (as anyone would).
5. Will you be identifying individuals? If your collection is not anonymous, it's best to make that clear up front, because not disclosing that information is likely to backfire later.

If you don't expect your storytellers to perceive any danger in telling you their stories, it's better to let sleeping dogs lie. Having a "privacy" link will satisfy those with questions. However, if there are clear indications that this issue will drive people away, a highly visible statement of commitment to privacy is critical.

Two contrasting examples:

1. An example of a let-sleeping-dogs-lie project might be one where you are asking people about their experiences with a product that does something without deep emotional resonance -- say you want to improve your shampoo. Because people will not be revealing deep truths about their personal lives, because they are not likely to have a particularly strong feelings about a company that makes shampoo, and because it makes no sense to identify shampoo customers, people are not likely to care much about what you do with the stories. In this case, making a big point of telling them exactly what you will do with the stories may cause suspicion to arise where it would have been absent.
2. An example of a reassurances-needed project might be one where you are examining public attitudes about government assistance programs. Because people may worry that truth-telling about their experiences may result in retaliations, and because people may have strong feelings and may need to talk about deep issues affecting their lives, and because people are likely to distrust government programs, not telling people what you will do with their stories is likely to result in little disclosure. In this case I would suggest making reassurances of anonymity and privacy visible and clear.

If you don't know whether the people you will be asking to tell stories will perceive danger in the project, try asking a few of them before you start the larger collection.

Bringing it together

This table summarizes the recommendations above.

Telling people...	is helpful when you have...	but not when you have...
why the project is being done	high interest	low interest
	high benefit	low benefit
		a goal to change the organization
		a goal to change people
who is involved in the project (sponsors, collectors, storytellers, beneficiaries)	low narrative distance	high narrative distance
	high value perception	low value perception
	low power differential	high power differential
why you want to hear stories	curious storytellers	incurious storytellers
	non-busy storytellers	busy storytellers
	non-expert storytellers	expert storytellers
	eager storytellers	non-eager storytellers
what will be done with the stories	high narrative distance	low narrative distance
	low value perception	high value perception
	high power differential	low power differential
	personal, emotional topic	non-personal, trivial topic
	identified collection	anonymous collection

Do's and don'ts

I'll finish this post with a few general do's and don'ts about disclosing information about your project.

Do think about the people you are asking to tell stories, and don't trust your instincts about them. In general the greater the narrative distance between you (the project planner) and your storytellers, the greater the benefit of early, small, pilot story collections in planning a larger project. If you don't know, don't guess; find out. Try out your explanations and your questions. Even asking three people is better than guessing.

Whatever you say or don't say, don't lie about what you are doing, why you are doing it, and for whom. Follow the old rule: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Either come up with something nice you can say, or don't say anything. But don't try to get people to contribute using an obvious lie, like that you are going to distribute customer stories to your staff (without actually planning to), or that the stories will determine corporate direction (if you have no such intent). People can smell a lie from a mile off. And if they do, the result won't be as simple and manageable as not getting very many stories. It'll be worse: you'll get stories, and you'll think you have results, but the results will be distorted in unpredictable ways, and there will be no way to fix it.

Don't broadcast your insecurities through the information you provide. I've seen people try so hard to explain why what they are doing is useful that it's obvious they don't think it will work. You don't need people to understand the point of the whole thing or agree that it's useful or validate your choice of method. You just need them to tell stories. Everyone gets frustrated when respondents say things like "this is STUPID!!!!" or "what is the POINT of this" or "I don't care" and so on. This comes up in all story collections. It's easy to get defensive and try too hard to eludicate the merits of the approach, either in person or by loading too much explanation into an online survey. Don't let yourself do that. Present confident explanations. The more confident you are that people will tell stories, the more they will tell stories.

Do prepare short and long explanations. People usually break out into groups based on how much information they want to see. Some people want to do the best possible job they can; some just want to get the thing over with; some might get interested and might not depending on the weather; and some will want to check everything out carefully before they agree to say anything. If your short explanation is a sentence, prepare a paragraph as well, and vice versa. Your long explanation might never get used. But having it ready can increase the variety of stories you collect by giving those who want more information a reason to stay engaged. It can also increase your confidence in the project by helping you feel ready for anything.

Do watch what you say, but don't overlook transparency as a tool. Sometimes people think giving storytellers any information about the project will be damaging. But that's not always or even often true. Unlike direct questioning in simple surveys, narrative projects always involve an element of motivation. I've seen projects produce lackluster results because the people telling the stories didn't open up as much as the project planners hoped they would. All of us know how to say a lot without saying much. It's almost the default option when we are asked for information. Giving people a compelling reason to dig more deeply into their experiences can upgrade a project's results from satisfactory to revelatory and transformational. Sometimes when you give people exactly the information they need, they will work with you to help the project succeed.

Why narrative inquiry?

The other day somebody asked me for the "top ten" reasons narrative inquiry is preferable to direct questioning. It was an interesting challenge, and this is the result. I've grouped the ten reasons into three groups.

Human-social aspects of narrative inquiry

Social function. People act differently and expect different things when they tell and listen to stories than when they talk normally. This gives the sharing of stories both a unique function in society and a unique advantage when one wants to understand feelings and beliefs. When a person tells a story in a group, that person is given both the floor and the attention (and silence) of the party. Asking people to tell you stories sends them the message that you have given them the floor and your attention. It sets up the situation "I am listening" rather than the situation "I am interrogating" and thus triggers a different social response.

Emotional safety. The separation between narrative events (storytellings) and narrated events (what takes place in stories) provides an emotional distance that creates the safety people need to disclose deeply held feelings and beliefs. As a result, people often reveal things about their feelings or opinions on a subject while they are telling a story that they wouldn't have been willing or able to reveal when talking about the topic directly. A story is a socially accepted package in which people have learned from a young age to wrap up their feelings, beliefs and opinions. People know that they can metaphorically place a story on a table and invite others to view and internalize it without exposing themselves to the same degree as they would if they stated those feelings, beliefs and opinions directly.

Providing a voice. Most people are very used to being asked for their opinions in standard surveys, and they get out their well-practiced poker faces for that game. Asking people to tell stories gives them a sign of respect by legitimizing their experiences as valuable communications. Respect is also communicated by giving people the freedom to choose what story they will tell and how the story will take form. The mere fact of saying "we really do want to know what has happened to you" is something many people have rarely experienced. Many respondents in narrative surveys have expressed gratitude for the chance to tell their story.

Cognitive aspects of narrative inquiry

Engagement. A story has a natural situation-tension-resolution shape, and people usually find it difficult to "leave" the story before the resolution has occurred, whether they are telling it or listening to it. The story pulls them in and engages them until it has completed its course. In the context of inquiry, this reduces the frequency of respondents answering questions without giving them much thought. Even if people had meant to ignore the inquiry, they are sometimes captivated by the storytelling aspect and stay longer (and say more) than they would have otherwise.

Articulation. When people tell stories, they sometimes reveal feelings and beliefs of which they themselves are not aware. When the answer to a direct question is "I don't know," asking for a story may provide the contextual triggers that bring out the tacit knowledge and relevant experience required. After the story has been told, the storyteller may still not know the answer to the direct question. However, if you collect hundreds of narrative answers, a coherent response will usually take shape.

Interpretation. When you ask people to tell stories, and then ask them questions about their stories, you are asking them to interpret rather than opine. This displacement gives people both the freedom to say forbidden things -- it's about the story, it's not about myself -- and the safety to admit fault or place blame. Also, people tend to have stronger reactions to hearing stories, in terms of the emotions they show, than they have to hearing factual information. For example, listeners tend to fidget less and lean in more when a story is being told than when someone is giving opinions or relating information. This makes asking people to interpret their own stories a useful means of surfacing their feelings about important issues.

Authenticity. When the goal of the project is communicative, whether this means communicating a message to customers or communicating the needs of customers to producers, stories convey complex emotions with more ground truth than any other means of communication. Direct questioning may generate more precise measurements, but story elicitation ensures greater depths of insight and understanding into complex topics and complex people. The act of listening to a story told by another person creates a suspension of disbelief and displacement of perspective that helps people see through new eyes into a different world of truth.

Imagination. When a topic is complex and many-layered, the best course is to increase diversity, generate many ideas, think out of the box, and prepare for surprise. Asking a diverse range of people to tell you what they have done and seen enlists their imagination along with your own. This both broadens the net of exploration by opening the inquiry to the varieties of human experience and increases its flexibility by capturing multidimensional context which can be plumbed again and again as needs emerge. In contrast, direct questioning, though precise, is narrowly focused and produces unidimensional content that can provide only one answer.

Information-gathering aspects of narrative inquiry

Contextual richness. When you ask direct questions, it is easy to guess wrongly about what sorts of answers people might have and even about what sorts of questions might lead to useful answers. This is often a problem when exploring complex topics. Asking people to talk about their experiences can sometimes lead to useful answers even if the wrong questions were asked, because the contextual richness of stories provides information in excess of what was directly sought. In fact, being surprised by the questions posed (and
answered) by collected stories is a standard outcome of narrative inquiry.

Redirection of non-responses. A well-constructed story elicitation results in fewer non-response behaviors (answering without considering, manipulating the survey to promote an agenda, trying too hard to do what seems to be expected, and so on) than direct questioning. These behaviors don't go away when people tell stories, but they are both reduced and more obvious when they do occur. Because telling a story pulls in both teller and listener, the reluctant pay more attention, those with agendas reveal their true thoughts (even while promoting their agendas), and performers have a harder time guessing what they are supposed to say (and switch to telling the best story they can). Also, non-responses are easier to spot in narrative results, because the texts of the stories themselves provide clues to why people gave the answers they did.

Gems: Studying Those Who Study Us

Here I begin another series of blog posts, this time on resources I've found (mainly books) that have been so useful to my understanding of organizational and community narrative as to call them "gems." As usual it's far too long, and again I beg your tolerance.

Cases and stories

When people start exploring what has been said and done in the area of stories and organizations, the field of case-based reasoning usually comes up. Case-based reasoning, or CBR, is an offshoot of cognitive science and artificial intelligence having to do with making decisions using cases, or stories about previous events. CBR is similar to organizational narrative in that bodies of stories are used to help people make decisions and share knowledge. However, CBR databases are very different from what I will call "story collections" in these ways:

1. CBR databases, as expert systems, are compiled only from interviews with experts in an area, whereas story collections include storytellers with a wide range of expertise and experience, and even deliberately juxtapose different and sometimes competing perspectives.
2. CBR databases are compiled from interviews in which only the most knowledgeable experts are asked to talk specifically and directly about knowledge, with the view of passing on how things are done. By contrast, story collections ask people to tell stories about their work (or any topic) as a whole. Story collections treat as valuable the most personal, emotional, and idiosyncratic aspects of the story -- pride, disappointment, pain, joy, confusion -- whatever resonates deeply with the storytellers. Questions are aimed obliquely and ambiguously in order to reveal not only how things are done but also how things may not be done, what things are like, how they got to be that way, and what it all means.
3. CBR databases are indexed by cognitive elements such as topic, task, goal, plan, lesson learned, and so on. Indexing is typically done by experts in the CBR field. Story collections are not indexed but interpreted for meaning and emotional content by the storytellers themselves.
4. CBR databases are used by indexing critical elements of the situation at hand, zeroing in on the relevant cases, and offering up solutions to fit needs. Story collections are sometimes used to find solutions to problems, but they are more often used when people don't know what they need to know - when they need to uncover biases, reveal trends, hear voices, discover paradoxes, improve self-awareness, and ask new questions.

Case-based reasoning works by what I call the "noun way" of getting an answer: the answer you get is the answer you need. Zeroing in, closing down and narrowing the field of possible answers are required for this process. In contrast, sory collections work by the "verb way" of getting an answer: the answer you get is not the answer you need, it is what triggers what goes on in your mind to get you closer to the answer you need. For this purpose, broadening things out and shaking things up are what is required.

The point I want to make in this essay, and the point of the "gem" I want to tell you about, is that CBR and other systems of knowlege representation are excellent tools for collecting and organizing how-to manuals for simple and complicated situations, such as repairing engines or designing load-bearing structures. But story collections are the tool of choice when your aims and issues are complex. And surprisingly little of human knowledge is not complex, even if it seems simple.

What is common sense?

To illustrate the differences in ways of looking at knowledge among the different fields concerned with it, let us consider the concept of common sense. Reading about common sense has always confused me, because people in different academic traditions use it in different ways (and with great confidence in their local meanings). As far as I can make it out, the term can mean any of six different things.

First, as it was used in antiquity, common sense referred to a fusion of the inputs coming from the five senses. To say "use your common sense" meant "use all of your powers of observation." That use has been pretty much abandoned, so I will also set it aside.

Later, the "common" in "common sense" changed to refer to what is common among a group of people instead of within one person. After that it splintered into five possible meanings. I list them here moving from least to most complex.

1. Common sense is what a system moving and working in 3D space needs to know. In this sense, the phrase refers to the body of knowledge limited to statements like "things that are let go of in space fall towards the earth" and "objects that are piled up sometimes fall down again." Those who speak of common sense in this way tend to be designing autonomous robots that need to move around and manipulate objects.
2. Common sense is what the common people believe to be true. This meaning is similar to "naïve physics" or "folk knowledge." It refers to what people know about something when they have no specialized knowledge about it -- what a banker knows about making shoes, what a shoemaker knows about banking. This sense of the term is more exclusive than inclusive, since it defines people more by what they don't belong to (the ranks of those with specialized knowlege, which is often synonymous with the ranks of power and prestige) than by what they belong to. This use of the term is similar to the use of "common" to mean "commoner," or not of noble birth. People who use this sense of the term tend to be writing about psychology and studying how people think and reason.
3. Common sense is what every human being believes to be true. This sense of the term is used primarily by people who work in the area of knowledge representation and build common-sense knowledge bases.  Major projects in this area include Cyc, the Open Mind Common Sense project (OMCS) and MindPixel. These projects claim to represent the knowledge every human being uses in daily life. The Wikipedia page on the OMCS project gives example statements that include "A coat is used for keeping warm," "The sun is very hot" and "The last thing you do when you cook dinner is wash your dishes."
4. Common sense is what a society believes to be true. This is the sense in which most anthropologists and sociologists use the term. In the anthropologist R.M. Keesing's famous statement, culture is "...not all of what an individual knows and think and feels about his world. It is his theory of what his fellows know, believe and mean, his theory of the code being followed, the game being played, in the society into which he was born." In this sense common sense is contextual, situated, idiosyncratic, and subject to change over time. Dictionaries and thesauri, though they do build knowledge bases, tend to see knowlege as more culturally situated and subject to change than do projects more closely aligned with the artificial intelligence field.
5. Common sense is what our society should believe to be true. This is the sense politicians and activists use when they talk about "common sense" as a call to political (or literal) arms. The message of such uses is "if you are with us, you will believe this." Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense is a famous example of this use. Says Paine: "Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom." Paine later asks of his reader "that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day." Note the terms used here: fashionable, favor, habit, appearance, outcry, custom, and the most obvious nod to identity politics, "true character of a man."

If you look at who uses each sense of the term "common sense," a pattern emerges: builders of simple "mindless" robots at the simplest level, then cognitive scientists interested in artificial intelligence, followed by anthropologists, and at the apex of complexity, politicians and activists. Also notice that as complexity increases, breadth of coverage decreases: from anything capable of moving about, to the uninformed, to people in general, to those in one society's culture, to those in one political party. (Why do I place "the uninformed" as more broad than "people in general?" Because from what I've seen, and as I'll explain, the view of "people in general" embedded in most "universal" knowledge bases is far from universal.)

Definitions of common sense 

These meanings of the term are not easily separated. Dictionary definitions often lump two or more meanings together without distinction. WordNet (which has mixed aspirations as both a knowledge base and a dictionary/thesaurus) defines common sense simply as "sound practical judgment" (my sense three above). Dictionary.com calls it "sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge, training, or the like; normal native intelligence" (my senses two and three above). The Merriam-Webster online dictionary says it is "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts" (senses two and three). Microsoft's Encarta dictionary calls it "sound practical judgment derived from experience rather than study" (more two than three). 

The definition on allwords.com is the most interesting of all:

Common sense. Ordinary good consciousness, awareness or understanding of something, arrived at though taking in account recent events and thoughts of others involved, used for the greater good of all involved.

This combines senses two (ordinary), three (good), four (others) and five (greater good). Add in gravity and you have the whole mix.

Wikipedia does the best job of giving a nuanced definition of the mixed meanings in the term (my additions show the senses referred to):

Common sense (or, when used attributively as an adjective, commonsense, common-sense, or commonsensical), based on a strict construction of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" as their common [three, four] natural [three] understanding. Some people (such as the authors of Merriam-Webster Online) use the phrase to refer to beliefs or propositions that — in their opinion — most people would consider prudent and of sound judgment [three], without reliance on esoteric knowledge or study or research [two], but based upon what they see as knowledge held by people "in common" [four]. Thus "common sense" (in this view) equates to the knowledge and experience which most people allegedly [four] have, or which the person using the term believes [four] that they do or should [five] have.

Some "definitions" of common sense clearly reference particular meanings, often the fifth, aspirational meaning alone. From a blog post with a list of postmodern definitions as "a useful gauge to see how academics construct their sentences" (which may or may not be satirical):

COMMON SENSE: In postmodernism in general, common sense is considered a fiction created by those in power to convince the oppressed that ideology is simply the way things really are. See ideological effect, myth.

Here is a hilarious (and again, possibly satirical and possibly straight-faced) definition of common sense from jurisdictionary.com, a site that sells legal advice:

Common Sense. The presence of mind and general caution and concern that the law imputes to all persons, i.e., sense everyone should have. Everyone owes a duty to use common sense. The breach of this duty may give rise to a cause of action.

And one from a religious web site:

The term refers to that KNOWING which is within all of us, as a characteristic of the mature human mind, which does have access to any and all KNOWING of the dimensions of consciousness beyond the self. Although anyone can certainly have an instance or episode of such common sense, such KNOWING, unfortunately if one is "lost" to the negativity of Satan's influences upon humanity, even then, that person's maturity of mind is being blocked by the Veil of Unknowing and their consequently immature mind (of whatever age) does not have this attribute of common sense.

One pattern I've noticed is that the attempts to build universal human common-sense databases (such as Cyc, WordNet, and so on) tend to speak only of senses one, two and three (the least complex and cultural). It is surprising that WordNet, for example, lists only one sense for the term "common sense" even though it lists no fewer than nine senses for the adjective "common" (and they cover all five meanings listed here). Could this be a blind spot in such knowledge bases, something they prefer not to admit about their own definitions of what they are doing and what they represent?

The gem

With that preparation, the gem to which I would like to introduce you is Diana Forsythe's 2001 book Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence. Tragically, publication of this work was posthumous, as this groundbreaking researcher died in 1997 in a rafting accident. This audacious work, in which Forsythe reports on observations made during years of participant observation with working cognitive scientists, is a fascinating journey through the minds of people who think they know what we know. The researchers Forsythe studied are the "knowledge engineers" who create common-sense knowledge bases and talk about common sense in the all-human-beings-know-this sense (third in the list above).

According to Forsythe's field work, knowledge engineers operate on the basis of three essential assumptions that influence their work. She contrasts these assumptions with those made by social scientists, who primarily use the cultural definition of common sense (fourth in the list above).

1. Knowledge engineers believe that knowledge is a structured, static thing that can be extracted, acquired, cloned, and stored. It is something that experts have and novices don’t. These engineers call the elicitation of knowledge a bottleneck, express frustration that it is inefficient, and hope that someday it can be automated. Experts who are offended at the idea that their knowledge can be so easily transmitted are termed "prima donnas" and "cantankerous" and are avoided. In this view knowledge is also seen as individually held, having no social dimension. In contrast, social scientists see the extraction of knowledge as impossible, since it is a dynamic and contextually situated phenomenon of shared construction. They also believe that the expert-novice distinction is relative, not absolute: every human being is an expert in some things and a novice in others, depending on the context.
2. Knowledge engineers see knowledge as entirely conscious. Thus they believe that experts can fully articulate their knowledge and that there are no differences between what people say they do and what they do. They see no reason to visit an expert in their workplace or to observe the expert doing normal work tasks; they believe that asking the expert what they know, straight out, is sufficient. Social scientists, on the other hand, believe that a large portion of knowledge is tacit and not easily surfaced, and that the relation between self-representation and observed action is tenuous.
3. Knowledge engineers see knowledge as universal and absolute. Thus they "prefer if possible to use themselves as experts," since anyone can capture "the world’s knowledge" simply by introspection. (Says Forsythe: "I have come to think of this style of thought as 'I am the world' reasoning.") Social scientists believe that knowledge is inherently contextual and relative, and cannot be transplanted from one brain to another. Forsythe noted, for example, that nearly every AI researcher she studied was a white Western male, and that they were perfectly comfortable assuming that whatever they knew was what every human being needed to know. 

Again according to Forsythe, these beliefs create three characteristics of knowledge bases created by knowledge engineers.

1. Knowledge bases depend on a non-representative sample of experts or even introspection as their sole source of information, and thus are narrow in scope. No evidence of conflict or diversity of thought is permitted, and the knowledge codified within them contains no negotiated, contextual, or organizational elements. Also, because of the belief that knowledge can be extracted, experts tend to be interviewed out of the context of their expertise, so the knowledge they are able to articulate is only a portion of mature thought in the field. For example, Forsythe recalls how an expert system built to support worldwide geological exploration failed when it went into production because the expert interviewed had only local knowledge of one geographical area.
2. Because the organization of knowledge bases is set in advance, they are brittle and cannot easily adapt to new uses. Expert system builders claim that indexing mechanisms should be based on first principles about how people think about narrative and experience. However, because of the belief that knowledge is universal, most of the indexing mechanisms used have been based on introspection, not on empirical evidence – thus they correlate more with the way researchers believe they themselves think than with the way people actually think. Also, because of the belief that knowledge has no social dimension, indexing is thought of entirely within one mind. The idea that there might be socially relevant indexes does not appear. 
3. Because knowledge bases are set up to store knowledge as a thing, they are static. They are like vaults in which information is locked up, never again to enjoy a life of discourse with the world. Such systems quickly become out of date or even nonsensical as the world around them changes.

 Forsythe ultimately warns that:

Those whose ways of knowing and doing are classified as "knowledge" and "expertise" by the builders of expert systems will find their view of the world reinforced and empowered by this powerful emerging technology. Those whose perspectives and practice are not so classified are likely to find their voices muted still further as the world increasingly relies upon intelligent machines.

Obviously I wouldn't be suggesting this book as a "gem" if I didn't agree with Forsythe's conclusions. Reading Forsythe's book (alongside cognitive science books and papers) had a large influence on my research on building story collections. That doesn't mean I think case-based reasoning is not useful. For some domains it is undeniably useful and appropriate. Narrow, brittle and static knowledge bases are just the thing when you need to look up engineering specifications and automate factory production. What concerns me is when I see case-based reasoning applied to complex areas such as education, medical diagnosis and decision support. That's where the gem shows its real value.

Why is an umbrella?

There's a little game I play when looking at books and papers about knowledge representation. I find an example about how computers need to be told things about "everyday" life and "universal human" knowledge, and then peel away the layers of assumptions about culture and context inherent in the statement.

One of the canonical examples that often comes up in the knowledge representation and CBR literature is this one:

"If it is raining, carry an umbrella."

The first time I encountered this statement -- which is rendered in so many places and with such confidence that it sounds like "the night is dark" in its universality -- I was taken aback. I'm not much of an umbrella user myself. If I'm caught in the rain I run or walk. On a very rainy day I might put on a raincoat, but as often as not I don't mind getting wet. Besides, umbrellas are awkward and sharp when you are walking with a small child (you might put somebody's eye out!). One thing I've learned living in the forest is that during that wonderful/awful time of the year when everything is blooming and growing, and the blood-sucking blackflies are out in full force, rain is your best friend. Blackflies hide in the rain, so we take full advantage of every rainy day and soak ourselves in it. (In mosquito season the rules reverse and rain requires a retreat to safety.)

There have been times in my life when umbrellas were important, but it was never because of anything as simple as rain. When I used to go to New York city all the time, I carried an umbrella for protection. After I hurt my back, I supported myself for a while with a long, cane-like umbrella because it didn't look as much like a cane as a cane would. Long ago when I went through an all-black-clothing period (don't ask) I used an ancient umbrella to heighten the sense of mystery and interesting alienation.

Once I was in New York city on my way to a workshop, and the sky opened up and simply dumped rain on the streets. I had no umbrella, or raincoat either, so I ran between awnings. Sometimes I tried to sneak under the huge, elaborate, expensive umbrellas some well-dressed people were carrying. The looks I got made it clear that walking in that part of town without an umbrella was a clear sign that I was of a different category of people, a category unfit to share an umbrella with a holder of a huge, elaborate, expensive umbrella.

I've always found that canonical statement about umbrellas to be strangely sterile and foreign to the world I live in. I seem to have been born to attest to the reality of alternative perspectives, being a "few out of the few" in several dimensions (to choose one: left-handed and ambidextrous). I take this as a message from [insert your belief system here] to act as a social gadfly and say "that's not the only way to see it" whenever possible. Which explains some of my attraction to story listening.

So lately I've been reading about umbrellas and their history and uses, just to see if I could find more inside the canonical umbrella statement to peel away. (There are many other such statements in the knowledge representation literature, but the umbrella one is used so often that it simply begs to be challenged.)

A brief history of the not-so-humble umbrella 

It is unclear whether the Chinese or the Egyptians first came up with the idea of the umbrella, and whether protection from sun or rain was the purpose. But umbrellas were never only about protection, at least not of the physical kind. As with many human solutions, the history of umbrellas is soaked with references to status, power and class. The earliest umbrellas were so large and heavy that they were owned only by the wealthy (or gods) and carried only by slaves or servants. Says the Wikipedia page on umbrellas:

In Persia the parasol is repeatedly found in the carved work of Persepolis, and Sir John Malcolm has an article on the subject in his 1815 "History of Persia." In some sculptures, the figure of a king appears attended by a servant, who carries over his head an umbrella, with stretchers and runner complete. In other sculptures on the rock at Takht-i-Bostan, supposed to be not less than twelve centuries old, a deer-hunt is represented, at which a king looks on, seated on a horse, and having an umbrella borne over his head by an attendant.

Umbrellas were used as signals to broadcast authority and to maintain control in uncertain social situations. This history of umbrellas at the "big site of amazing facts" says:

In the fifteenth century, Portuguese seamen bound for the East Indies brought along umbrellas as fit gifts for native royalty. Upon landing on a strange island, the seamen immediately opened an umbrella over their captain’s head, to demonstrate his authority.

Did indigenous people use umbrellas? Do they now? It seems that people do use leaves, whether singly if they are large or woven into mats, to shield their heads from both sun and rain, and have for many years. But when I find umbrellas mentioned with respect to indigenous tribes the uses are symbolic and social. This article on umbrellas made from Pandanus (poro) leaves in the Solomon Islands says that "Pandanus leaves are woven into hoods by women, who wear them when a taboo relative is present or during special occasions." The "Asante umbrella" is, again, used for symbolic meaning: according to this article, an early explorer who met with the Asante said that the "umbrella is the outward and visible sign of the dignity and importance of its possessor" and that "the glory and social prestige imparted by an umbrella varies with its size." (This is also true in certain parts of New York city.)

Umbrellas have at times been taboo. In the Middle Ages, Europeans considered umbrella use heretical, possibly because their use was confined to ceremonial religious processions. Later, only women used them; a man using an umbrella was considered effeminate. According to William Sangster's fascinating Umbrellas and Their History (ca. 1871), Jonas Hanway was the first Englishman "who ventured to dare public reproach and ridicule by carrying an Umbrella." (He was excused, to some extent, on account of having picked up bad habits in his travels to Persia and because of his ill health.) After Hanway's death in 1786, after he had carried an umbrella in public for some thirty years, men began to carry what they called "Hanways" and the umbrella grew in popularity among British men as well as women.

Umbrellas today 

Enough history; let's consider umbrella use today. First, let's look at some advertisements, which offer no end of amusement. Here's a little quiz for you. Is this advertisement intended to entice you to buy (a) a man's umbrella, (b) a woman's, or (c) a child's?

There’s nothing like a prop to bring out [your] inner diva. Whether vamping it up with a feather boa or flirting coyly with a painted fan, a [person] becomes positively magnetic with the addition of just the right accessory. Though a bouquet is a [person’s] traditional best friend, daring [people] are reaching for parasols and umbrellas to best set off their ... charms.

How about this one?

Rugged design features titanium reinforced ribs that provide strength and durability while still being lightweight and portable. Automatic Open and Close mechanism opens and closes the umbrella at the push of a button. Measures 11 in. collapsed and opens to a full 40 in. diameter umbrella canopy.

 Or this?

This cute ... umbrella features a see through water-proof cover for extra rain protection, pinch-proof runner and covered safety tips, fun tinted bubble style with matching color handle. Because the canopy is see through, [the owners] will be able to see where they are going and see traffic while using this umbrella, which is a great safety feature.

Are you laughing? Do I even need to tell you the answers to this quiz? And do umbrellas still seem perfectly utilitarian after reading these?

Now, how would you say the targeted buyers of this umbrella see themselves?

Humor and surprise are two of [a designer's] hallmarks, as witnessed by this [design]. [This] witty umbrella ... is known and enjoyed throughout the world. Designed by [a company] for [a museum] with [a] design by [an artist], the collapsible umbrella has an automatic open-close mechanism. Made for [the museum] with nylon exterior and lining. Size: 38" span. Proceeds from the sale of these products are used to support [the museum's] programs.

Or this one?

How can [a company] offer such decadent and sexy fabrics for their umbrellas? Well, we choose only sumptuous fabrics, and unsual prints for our umbrellas. Then, we have the fabric commercially treated for water repellency. We are also importing small quantities of truly unique umbrella fabrics from Milan. That's why a [brand name] makes a statement. Dare to be different! We're not for everyone! Are we for you?

How about this?

Whacks just as strong as a steel pipe but it weighs only 1 lb. and 11 oz. (775 g).... Our Unbreakable Umbrella has no unusual parts, no more metal than an average umbrella, it does not arouse suspicion, can be carried legally everywhere where any weapons are prohibited, unlike a walking stick it does not cause strange looks if carried by an able-bodied person, and it does protect from rain. Anyone who can use a stick for defense can use this umbrella.

So, are umbrellas for keeping off the rain? It's becoming increasingly complex, isn't it?

Umbrellas and social norms

How do people feel about umbrellas today? Is using an umbrella more commonsensical than other approaches to dealing with rain? What do people tell each other about umbrellas and rain? To look at this question it is easy: just type in "If it is raining, carry an umbrella" into Google. Evidently this is an issue about which people have questions, because there are "should I use an umbrella" and "do you use an umbrella" questions all over the web.

For example:

When it rains, do you use an umbrella? Or, like me, do you just get wet because it's too much hassle? I just get wet but is not because of the hassle. It is because I love rain and the way it feels when raindrops crash on your skin. The sensation is just amazing, beyond words.

Do you use an umbrella when it rains? There are times, when I do use an umbrella. But there are times, when I don't, for whatever reason. I think that it just depends on the mood that I am in, on that specific day, and such.

Reading through these comments, there is an unmistakable scent of authority and social norming to umbrella carrying. Clearly some people avoid umbrellas to challenge authority, to assert their individuality, and to thumb their nose at the way things are supposed to be done. Here's a quote from a randomly accessed blog:

I have a disdain for umbrellas... You see, I have my own unique way of dealing with what Mother Nature threw at me.

Not carrying an umbrella is associated not only with uniqueness, but with freedom, with the carefree life of childhood. From another blog:

At one point in our lives, we all wanted to play in the rain again. Getting wet, run and splatter each other with those colds drops of water is truly an enjoyable experience. It makes us forget all our problems; all our worries in life; and every inch of the negative emotions inside us are miraculously washed away – even just for a mere period of time.

And another blog post called "Utopia is being able to act like a kid":

All of a sudden, the rain poured and I ran to avoid it. Soon, I stopped, realizing I haven’t been in the rain in a long, long time. Being an adult doesn't mean I need to avoid being wet with a rainfall. I decided to get drenched. A few of my friends and I decided to play soccer in the rain. Although hard-hit by the icy cold rain, I happened to have, for the first time in a long time, one of those times when you feel simply wonderful. Getting lost in a 'mature' world we don’t realize that we are missing the best days of our lives.

At an online poll called "Do you always carry an umbrella?" the results (I get to see them because I voted) are roughly equally distributed between "Yes", "Sometimes," and "No, I always forget." (Note that the "no" vote has a bit of social obligation clinging to it.)

Some people carry umbrellas in a bid to succeed, to do things the right way, to conform, to prove they are "one of us." Their statements, often given as advice, usually include references to authority, conformity and the "proper" way of doing things. The best way to find conforming umbrella statements is to search not for "do you use an umbrella" but "should you use an umbrella" and "how to use an umbrella." When you do that, you find statements like this, from How to Choose An Umbrella at eHow.com:

Everyone needs an umbrella! Whether you're searching for a basic, collapsible rain umbrella or an umbrella with artistic flair, read on to make an educated purchase.

One difficulty is that many of the sites offering authoritative advice on umbrella use sell umbrellas (reference my earlier post on "I am the answer").

Other useful search terms to combine with "umbrella" are "idiot" and "stupid" and "clueless." There's a funny and widely traded picture of former US President George Bush being outsmarted by an umbrella in windy weather that is really cruel in its unfairness. Or, in a random personal blog you find:

I join two fellow ... travelers beneath a tree. The difference between them and me is an umbrella; they've each got one and I don't. I stupidly attempt to shield myself from the rain beneath the tree as the wind shakes more dew upon me than necessary. Really, tree? ... And the bus must be chugging slowly slowly slowly because it's past its prime functioning hours. But it arrives. I probably look like a wet umbrella-less idiot, standing there beneath the tree. My co-travelers must be judging me. I would, even if the situation is comical. 

There are even regional differences in cultural patterns of umbrella use. This article goes into great detail on the myth that people who live in Seattle don't use umbrellas in order to look "in the know." A blog post called "Should guys carry an umbrella" goes into detail on umbrella-related social norms in five cities. (This also points out that the effeminate charge has not disappeared.)

It also turns out there is a lot to know about how to use an umbrella. Believe it or not, "umbrella etiquette" is a term in use. This advanced etiquette web site has a full page on how to use an umbrella in public. Evidently umbrella owners must "learn the dance of the umbrella" -- meaning, don't poke people in the head with your umbrella or drip water onto them. This is evidently very important for short people who are more likely to have problems with umbrella heights and head heights. This funny blog post on "that famous Vancouver rain" says it well:

[L]earn how to use your freaking umbrella. I’ve got news for you…it’s wider than your head, dumbass. Don’t swing the shit around and don’t force people to dodge the stines. And to all you little 4 foot 10 ladies… most everyone on the street is taller than you! Your stupid umbrella is eye level people, and when you swing and bob it around you run the risk of poking some poor sap in the eyeball. Not me, cuz I wear glasses, but someone else. Have a thought for the people around you, please.

If you are not completely sick of umbrellas by now, here and here are two more blog posts that link to new ideas in umbrella design, including: an inflatable model with cloud-shaped bubbles; a hands-free model (not for the claustrophobe); an umbrella that covers sixteen people ("receptions were varied"); one that incorporates a squirt gun for fun or defense; one that lights up and says "don't forget" when you put it on a table; one that locks onto a pole so you can't lose it ("Do not lose your key."); one that incorporates a paintbrush for whimsical mud paintings; one painted like a GPS location dot ("...as if it is saying: 'Hey, I’m right here!'"); the "unbrella," which converts any sheet of flat material, such as a newspaper, to an umbrella-like object; and finally, one that exists only of a sheet of forced air that propels raindrops away from the head (and onto other heads?). Clearly the gargantuan imaginative force of our collective social genius is readily apparent in the world of rain and umbrellas.

Why is rain?  

Now, let's peel off the final layer. What is rain anyway, and what does rain mean, and what does getting wet mean? Does every human being consider keeping dry in the rain a high priority? Is keeping dry in the rain "common sense"? Is it a universal human trait? Does it enter into every village in every corner of every place on earth? This article, on how different cultures view rain, says:

For many in the Western World, rain is viewed as a negative thing. Children's rhymes like Rain Rain Go Away present the depressing rain as a stark contrast to the bright, happy, warming sun. But this way of thinking is not [the] norm for the Eastern World, such as Africa and the Middle East. Due to the agricultural nature of their society, rain is viewed as a soothing, joyful, sometimes beautiful gift. In fact, in drought-ridden Botswana, the word for rain, "pula" is also the name of the currency, which helps to solidify the position of importance rain holds in this agricultural region. 

Judeo-Christians look to the story of Noah to base their beliefs of the negativity of rain. In the story of Noah, God was angry and brought his anger down in the form of forty days and nights of unceasing rain, choosing only to spare the favored family of Noah. The tradition was picked up in Shakespearean literature. For example, the rainstorm in King Lear marked the high point of Lear's madness. Throughout the whole of The Tempest, rain is seen as a negative thing, a sign of trouble. Even in modern weather reports, the negative connotations of rain holds firm. When a storm is on the way, weather reporters sound almost apologetic when bringing this news to us. To be "in the eye of the storm" is to put oneself in great danger. To experience "the calm before the storm" is to know that danger is coming.

Native American culture, again a largely agricultural society, views rain differently. To the Anasazi tribe, rain is a sacred gift from the Rain God. Artwork from the tribe shows the Rain God as a benevolent figure who lovingly bestows rain on his loyal followers.

And so on. One cultural change is that as fewer and fewer people are involved in agriculture, societies view rain as a more negative thing than previously. While the term "rainmaker" retains its positive meaning, it has shifted to refer not to physical rain but to currency (as has "as right as rain"). I've noticed this negativity surrounding rain myself and found it disconcerting. In everyday conversation, people talk about rain as though it is some kind of scourge. But I view rain as a blessing, both because my soil is sandy and drains quickly and because I live in a forest, where the greatest danger is drought and the spectre of forest fire.

All right, all right, I'm done with rain and umbrellas. But as you can see, it's a fascinating exercise to compare these contemporary social negotiations about rain and umbrellas with the audacity of Jonas Hanway "who ventured to dare public reproach and ridicule." What was sensible is now heretical and what was heretical is now sensible. Common sense and heresy have changed places, as they have always done and will continue to do as long as there are people. Will there be umbrellas on the moon? Who knows?

The official story on umbrellas 

Now, here is our final test. After all of that messy, vibrant, funny, very human exploration, here is the entry for "umbrella" in the OpenCyc "common sense" knowledge base:

A mechanical device used for protection against certain elements of nature.

And here are the top three most populous statements in the Open Mind Common Sense database about umbrellas:

1. an umbrella is for protection from the rain
2. an umbrella is for keeping the sun off you
3. an umbrella is a device to protect something 

In comparison to what we've been pondering -- and I'm sure we've only scratched the surface of the place where people and rain and umbrellas come together -- these statements seem like nothing but crude caricatures, jokes, even insults to the immense complexity of human common sense. Well, a joke is one thing, and an insult can be ignored, but I'm afraid things have gone further than that. A mother I know told me that her child "failed" an assessment test for placement in some kind of official educational setting. Can you guess at one of the most critical questions on the test that determined this child's inadequacy? You can see it coming, right? The question was what do you do in the rain. The child's answer? Run. Wrong. Fail. Out of the group.

What I worry about is that Diana Forsythe's warning that "those whose perspectives and practice are not so classified are likely to find their voices muted" is already happening. Attempts to capture human knowledge as a static, narrow, brittle thing are already having an impact on social norms. The saddest thing about that placement test story is that the child did show common sense. Many people do run when it rains. The child's mother does. I do. (I asked my son the same question, out of the blue one day just to see, and his answer was the same.) But the child's response did not match the narrow, brittle, static caricature of common sense that the test makers had entered into the acceptable responses to the question. That's scary.

One of my favorites of Dave Snowden's many metaphors for the complicated-complex distinction is that of a mechanic walking up to an airplane with a toolbox. The complicated airplane doesn't react to the toolbox, no matter how large or authoritative it is. But people do. By the time the mechanic has arrived the human airplane is a whole different machine. It's like we are conducting a giant Heisenberg experiment with human knowledge, and the electrons aren't where they were before. One of the places where this shift in authority is most dangerous is in the area of storytelling. When the official stories become the only stories, our capacity to innovate, our collective imagination, our resilience in the face of change, is reduced. That's what worries me.

In practice

When I write I always imagine a canonical reader who has been collecting or listening to stories and using them to help an organization or community. This reader is not only friendly and approachable (otherwise I couldn't write) but also amazingly tolerant of abundant detail (otherwise I couldn't write). When I say "bear with me" they always respond "No, no -- go on! I'm fascinated!" But my canonical reader does insist on relevance. They want to know how what I am showing them can help them in their pursuit of effective story listening, and they do not tolerate off-topic diversions that never come round to anything in the end. They say things like "What do I care if you are left-handed?" and so on. This section is for you, dear on-topic reader.

Why should you care about case-based reasoning, and knowledge representation, and the aims of people who build robots? For two reasons. First, be aware that formal knowledge representation systems are creeping into all aspects of our lives, with effects both good and ill.

Second, when you collect stories, be aware that you are guaranteed to be attracted to the sweet fruits of simplicity, and that simplistic knowledge representations are among those fruits. Beware of strangers selling simple narrative solutions that reduce stories to lists of goal statements and facts. Reducing stories to one perspective, throwing away messiness and artificially resolving conflicts and paradoxes leads you down the scale of meanings of "common sense" into "I am the world" thinking. A while back I wrote about ways people sabotage their own narrative projects in order to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths. This is one of the ways in which they do it. Sliding down the complexity scale can be as simple as paying more attention to the factual elements of stories, such as location and official roles and subject matter, and less to things like emotion and conflict and confusion. It's also easy to slide down into "just the facts" without meaning to, which is why having an outside eye look over your questions can be helpful.

As I've said above, bridge engineers should be dealing with simplicity and order. But most people who collect stories do so because they need to grapple with complex, messy, social, cultural, emotional and sometimes painful issues. That's what people use stories for. It's where they belong. Moving down the scale of cultural complexity is calm, safe, controlled. It's like using an umbrella in the rain. But if you need to know anything about human beings, you can't find out what you need to know if you aren't willing to get wet.

Spam, spam, verbs and spam

Honestly, I don't know how people do this blogging thing. My thoughts are not blog thoughts. They are not many and short, they are few and long. Every time I try to write a short snappy post it turns into an extended essay. I wonder if blogging can work for all types of thinkers. While some people are moving into microblogging, there should be a place for those of us with slower-moving gears. Maybe if regular blogging (a few paragraphs) is mesoblogging, long and less frequent essay-blogging could be called macroblogging. Or sloth blogging, or elephant blogging, or owl blogging, or something.

Anyway, I'm working on what will probably be a cool blog post (but may equally well end up in the trash) and of course it's long. So here are just two tidbits from last week's post (on narrative divination for sensemaking) that I forgot to say then.

First, I forgot to say that spam is another untapped divination tool. (No, wait, come back!) Of course I agree that spammers deserve a special level of hell where they are forced to eat nothing but their own spam forever. But you have to admit, these spam people certainly have their finger on some kind of pulse. It's amazing how the spam I get tracks my current concerns so well. When I'm worried about money I get more spams about inheritances and lotteries. When I'm worried about my business I get more spams about business offers. When I'm feeling lonely I get spams that say "You haven't called me in a while." When I'm writing software I get spams about software promotion. When I was using, then leaving, Facebook I started getting spams with titles like "You didn't comment on my post." It's uncanny.

So here's a fun thing to do. If you happen to have a spam folder, before you clear it out you can use it for divination. I just tried it. I looked across the room and into the bathroom and remembered that I would someday like to put in a shower instead of that irritatingly useless double sink. (Why in the world do people need two places to wash their hands? Do they use one on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?) I used the ancient look-away-scroll-click divination method and landed on a spam about getting an advanced degree online. Immediately I begin thinking that if I did things to improve my business acumen, I might be able someday to afford that wonderful upstairs shower. And, that if I were to learn more about plumbing, maybe I could reduce the cost. And so on.

If you think about it, spam makes a great narrative database. It's little stories about what somebody thinks you will click on. I'm going to make you rich, I can save your sex life, I'll teach you new things, I need your help disposing of my money. If you mix all those stories together you have something that can trigger sensemaking. The banality of it actually helps with the serendipitous associations. I use the books on my living room shelves in the same way. I think of a vexing situation, then run my eyes over the titles and see what thoughts spring up. It works with lots of collections, as long as they are diverse and thought-provoking. (And yes, I'm aware that book titles are not stories; but the need to be careful about whether things are fully-formed stories or just references to or fragments of stories varies with the context of use.)

This leads into the second point I forgot to make before. There are two ways to get an answer to a question: the noun way and the verb way.

The noun way of getting an answer is, well, being given an answer. A noun. A measurement, a fact, a pixel of information. The length of the Amazon river is 4,132 miles. The noun way is the best approach when dealing with the known and knowable (or simple and complicated) side of things.

Usually. Mostly. From the Wikipedia page on the world's longest rivers:

The length of a river is very hard to calculate. It depends on the identification of the source, the identification of the mouth, and the scale of measurement of the river length between source and mouth. As a result, the length measurements of many rivers are only approximations. In particular, there has long been disagreement as to whether the Amazon or the Nile is the world's longest river.

The verb way of getting an answer is not getting an answer, but going through a process that nudges your thoughts into new patterns that would not have been possible otherwise. Narrative divination, and most sensemaking, is a verb way of getting an answer. It's the harder way, but when the things you want to think about are complex, the verb way is the most valuable. The verb way relies on analogy, indirection, diversity, assumption breaking, perspective shift, serendipity, and yes, even a bit of spam-like absurdity.

The noun and verb ways are not mutually exclusive: you can do both at once. Sometimes one will lead into the other, as my grab-a-topic-at-random search for the length of the Amazon river did. (Who knew river length was a political topic?) It's probably best to maintain an open mind and try both options in all situations rather than decide on either a priori. When you are seeking an answer, try mixing up your nouns and verbs.

That's a bite-sized post, I hope.