Sticky notes and coloured pens
I've been reading through Paul Adams' fascinating presentation on The Real Life Social Network (Slideshare link), where he talks about the work he does as User Research Lead for Social at Google. He's been talking to people about how they use social networking, and how their online social network(s) differ from their offline ones.
Slide #59 has a great image of a network mapping exercise: a big sheet of butcher's paper, covered in post-it notes with contacts written on them. Participants were encouraged to write down all the people in their network, and arrange the notes in any way that was meaningful to them... with overlapping boundaries drawn around groups like "family" and "work."
I'd like to do something similar when I interview people about their businesses. Not to the extent of "map your entire social network," because that could take weeks (and more post-it notes than I could carry), but I want to see where people get business-related information from. That will probably bring up groups like friends, family, customers, other business owners, bank managers, accountants, government bodies, etc.
Once the idea of a business' network is a bit more tangible, I want to look at which contacts are made or maintained online, and the ways in which people are doing this. For small organisations, external links are vital - and probably maintained through lots of ad hoc channels. Hopefully I'll find a range of different behaviours - from the highly regimented (all communication via channel A) to the wildly disparate (unruly chaos from dozens of channels at once). Then, the challenge comes in understanding how they ended up in their current state, and how they manage it.
Slide #59 has a great image of a network mapping exercise: a big sheet of butcher's paper, covered in post-it notes with contacts written on them. Participants were encouraged to write down all the people in their network, and arrange the notes in any way that was meaningful to them... with overlapping boundaries drawn around groups like "family" and "work."
I'd like to do something similar when I interview people about their businesses. Not to the extent of "map your entire social network," because that could take weeks (and more post-it notes than I could carry), but I want to see where people get business-related information from. That will probably bring up groups like friends, family, customers, other business owners, bank managers, accountants, government bodies, etc.
Once the idea of a business' network is a bit more tangible, I want to look at which contacts are made or maintained online, and the ways in which people are doing this. For small organisations, external links are vital - and probably maintained through lots of ad hoc channels. Hopefully I'll find a range of different behaviours - from the highly regimented (all communication via channel A) to the wildly disparate (unruly chaos from dozens of channels at once). Then, the challenge comes in understanding how they ended up in their current state, and how they manage it.