Narrative Collection and Analysis with StoryGarden

Stories can reveal what is really happening in your community or organization. StoryGarden assists in the collection and analysis of pertinent narratives.

SOMA's sister company, StoryGarden Media Inc. assists clients who wish to uncover the trends and emergent issues concerning a community through an analysis of its stories. The company uses proprietary tools and methods for gathering and analyzing stories contributed by the members of a specified community. The content of the stories, along with some associated survey questions, are processed using a methodology pioneered by Dave Snowden and licensed by his company Cognitive Edge.

The Process

Once objectives and goals have been clarified and the constituents of a specific community identified, StoryGarden works with a client to develop a strategy to motivate the contribution of stories from the constituents.

Demographic information is collected:

• by asking questions of the story contributor.
• is based on interests of system researchers/administrators.

Semantic search tools:

• instantly recognize and report the use of specified words and phrases (including synonyms and related words) in the narrative content of the stories.
• recognize and report specified concepts found in the narratives.
• group narratives that contain similar words, phrases, names, concepts
• based on inferred sentiment (i.e. pro or con, satisfaction – dissatisfaction etc.)

Concept Framework

• is the central, organizing system for the information contained in the narrative collection that enables the machine recognition of concepts used in the narrative collection.
• organizes and classifies the concepts, vocabulary, and entities of a particular field.
• is created by developing a set of definitions of vocabulary used in discourse by lay people and experts in a community of interest. In the IT world, these terms are used to associate classes, relations, functions and objects in the correct context using the common interpretation therein. This is often referred to as an "ontology".

Sense-Making Process

• allows contributors' voices, values and concerns to emerge using statistically valid methods.
• uncovers the presence and weight of values and concerns around specific topics/issues determined to be important by researchers/administrators.