Projective techniques in design research
Brief context, definition and how to use them.
This article was co-written with Heitor Pagliari
Before we start talking about how fun projective techniques are and how to use them to get into your participants most hidden thoughts, let’s start with a crash course on basic psychology:
FREUD IN 5 MINUTES
So it all started* with Sigmund Freud (I bet his friends called him Ziggy) father of psychology and everyone’s angry uncle.
Besides all the creepy scandals and making us think that our dreams are all about weird sex, he gave us a new way to think about who we are and how we feel.
*Yes, there were others before him and many after, but for today’s purposes let’s just call this “the beginning” or otherwise we will never get to the main part.
He told us that our minds are composed of 3 levels: The Conscious, the Preconscious and the Unconscious.
You can read more about it here, but the key message is that the Conscious mind is the one that processes all the thoughts and feelings that we are aware of.
The Preconscious is where our memory resides, where we keep the information that we need quick access to.
And the Unconscious mind is a storage for all the thoughts, feelings and memories that we are not aware of — usually things that we try to hide without realising it, like unpleasant or unacceptable thoughts.
Making it more visual, the Conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg and the Unconscious mind is everything hidden in that cold dark water.
Freud also divided our personalities in 3: the ID, the Ego and the Superego.
The ID, is our raw brutal selves, where all our natural urges live — like hunger, anger, excitement and desire (it’s Freud, so there’s obviously sex involved).
Just imagine all of these without any control…
Then we have the Ego. This is the part of our personality that interacts with society, grows and adapts based on morality and conventions.
Now to balance these two out we have the Superego that dilutes the raw impulses that come through, but only enough so that the Ego can control it.
This is simplifying the crap out of this, but you got the idea, right?
Theory is fine, but how does this work in practice?
Imagine someone pisses you off tremendously at work. Later that night you’re falling asleep on your comfortable bed and start to dream.
On the ID level, you feel like destroying the person that pissed you off. But since this is not good for you or society, your Superego will create a more acceptable scene in your mind.
So instead of the image of you hurting this person, you’ll repress this urge and instead you might dream of your office enemy surrounded by angry farting cats.
Too specific, we know, we will handle this in therapy later.
When you wake up, you only remember that you had a pretty crazy dream about cats for no apparent reason. This happened because your Superego blocked those unacceptable thoughts from your mind and hid them in a place that you can’t reach (your Subconscious).
So recapping to make sure we got it: your ID had an urge to do something that was not acceptable for your moral standards. In response to that, the Superego repressed this thought and hid it into your Subconscious so you don’t have to face this unpleasant side of yourself.
Of course this isn’t always perfect, and even Freud recognized some flaws in this process. But the key point is that our minds always seek balance to protect ourselves, and they have mechanisms to help them with this.
And one of those mechanisms is Projection (ta-da, we finally got here)!
FANCY STUFF, BUT CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME NOW WHAT THE HECK IS A PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUE AND WHAT TO DO WITH IT?
Psychology found out that certain human behaviours could be better understood by accessing those thoughts and emotions hidden in our Subconscious.
And Projective Techniques helps us with exactly that:
By exposing a person to a neutral stimulus (an image, a sound, a word, an object), we can invite them to make associations between their thoughts and that stimulus. This provides us a way to interpret and better understand what’s going on in their heads and why they behave in a certain way.
It’s about giving people a tool that they can use to give shape to their thoughts and emotions!
Actually, we do this Projection stuff all the time without realising it.
Remember your office enemy from the previous example? The whole situation might have started because they gave you feedback on your work and you misinterpreted it as an insult just by the tone they used.
In reality, what happened is that you usually use that kind of tone when you’re mad at someone, so when it was used on you, you just assumed it meant the same thing.
Projective Techniques can be a wonderful tool to have in your design & research toolkit, especially if you’re working on some deep or delicate topics.
Experiences involve emotions, and it’s not always easy to talk about the emotions that an experience makes you feel.
Imagine the situation: you walk into a room, or connect through zoom to a perfect stranger that wants to interview you. They start asking you questions about what you think about a product, how was your day, what you do in your life and your dreams for the future.
If you had a bad experience with the product and are afraid to offend who built it or are just having a bad day, you’re probably feeling tense by now and not painting a real picture of your feelings — and this is not an ideal scenario for any kind of research.
What usually happens in these situations is that we lose our capacity to elaborate emotions comfortably since we don’t like to be vulnerable in front of strangers.
By using projective techniques we help people to lower their guard and open themselves to us without feeling threatened.
COMMON TYPES OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES IN DESIGN RESEARCH:
Word Association
What it is: A simple enabling exercise where we suggest words participants can associate in any way with topics relevant to the research, such as a brand or activity.
What to expect from it: Finding the right words in a research interview can be hard, this technique gives participants vocabulary to better express themselves.
A real example:
A startup incubator wanted to identify the challenges that small entrepreneurs faced when starting this new path in their lives and how to better support them.
This was an overwhelming moment in those people’s lives: they had to learn a lot of different things, they were full of doubts and insecurities, they had a hurricane of feelings and emotions going through their minds. And it was extremely difficult for them to rationalize all of this.
So to help them articulate their thoughts in a more organized way, we presented a list of words — feelings like fear, joy, excitement and regret but also events like lack of money, family support and issues with bureaucracy — and asked them to choose the ones that best reflected their current moment.
Those words were then used as conversation prompts to guide the rest of the interview and deep-dive into specific topics.
Picture sorting
What it is: The participant sorts through images (ideally neutral images) and identifies the ones that best represent an emotion or thought around a specific topic.
What to expect from it: By giving participants a non verbal stimulus it helps them to verbalize their thoughts in a more abstract (and oftentimes easier) way.
A real example:
The journey of buying a car is an emotional rollercoaster full of ups and downs. But when we were interviewing people on that topic and asked them about it, they were always very focused on the rational part of the process: “I felt happy because I found a good car” or “I felt angry because the price was too high”.
To go deeper into their feelings and understand all those emotional nuances, we gave participants a set of Dixit cards (a card game where you need to match surrealist images with words) and asked them to choose the card that best represented how they felt in some specific situations.
This allowed us to understand what were the moments with the heaviest emotional burden (both positive and negative) and what we could do to minimize or potencialize them.
Third Person
What it is: A technique where participants are asked to suggest how they think other people would feel and behave in a certain situation.
What to expect from it: By explaining the problem from another point of view, the participant feels less guilty about pointing out potential problems and oportunities
A real example:
A new product recommendation feature for a fashion e-commerce was implemented but the number of users trying it was lower than expected. We decided to run some usability tests and, at the end of the session, asked the participants how they thought other users would use/feel about this new tool.
When they were testing it, most participants kept praising the feature and complimenting how practical and accurate the recommendations were for their personal style.
But when they started talking about a third person (the supposed “other users”, a.k.a. a projection of themselves) that’s when we learned something quite interesting:
In their point of view, “other users” like to use fashion e-commerce as a tool to fantasise about new styles and explore possibilities, and the recommendation tool didn’t allow this behaviour.
Brand Personification
What it is: In this technique we ask people to think about inanimate things (products or brands, for example) as if they were people and describe how those things would act, think and feel in certain situations.
What to expect from it: A description of how participant actually perceive this product or brand.
A real example:
When working on a project for a bank, we were trying to understand how people with money debts handled their personal finances. It was a very delicate topic and most of the research participants were feeling ashamed/not comfortable to talk about it.
So after a couple sessions we chose a different approach and, instead of asking about their situation directly, we changed it to: “If your bank account could talk, what would it tell us about you?”
The result was a way more lighter conversation about the topic where people shared funny anecdotes and some deep struggles that they faced to manage their finances.
This happened because we changed the focus of the conversation to an object (in this case, the bank account) and people were projecting their feelings and behaviours to it.
Drawing
What it is: Drawing is an amazing technique as it usually gets participants out of their comfort zone. We ask people to draw something (a situation, an object, a feeling) and then use the drawing to explore it in more depth — it’s not about the drawing itself but what it represents to the participant.
What to expect from it: When we draw we use other parts of our brain (and yes everyone says they can’t draw) that allows us to express things that we are not always aware of.
A real example:
When doing some research on urban mobility, we asked people to draw four words: Living, Transportation, Working and Recreation.
This allowed us to better understand the context of each participant and how they subconsciously perceived these moments of their day.
For example, one participant drew a packed bus on the Transportation part, while the other drew a car sharing app.
There are other projective techniques out there and we really encourage you to try them out to get better insights from your research.
But here are some words of advice:
- When using a Projective technique that requires a predefined set of stimulus (images or words, for example) be careful to not choose things that are too specific or that can be leading.
- Projective techniques are great for in-depth interviews, especially on complex topics. But they can be an overkill for simple stuff. Assess the value that it can bring to your project before deciding to use it.
- Some people can get VERY uncomfortable with this type of activity. Always have a plan B or be prepared to skip it if you feel that it’s getting awkward (read the room, people)
