Conversation Capture

Step 1:

• Go and sit in a coffee-shop or cafe for an hour.
• Try to find somewhere that’s not too crowded and where you should be able to listen in to a conversation that’s happening near to where you are sitting.
• If you are feeling adventurous try to go somewhere which is not your usual cup of tea (sorry for the pun).
• In his illuminating history of eavesdropping the anthropologist John Locke argues that “we humans have a strong and continuous desire to expose and experience private moments in the lives of Others”
  

Step 2:

• Listen to other people’s conversations.
• Listen to their speech patterns and their concerns.
• Try and get your observations down on paper. It might not be a good idea to make it too obvious.
• Don’t force it, don’t hop from table to table in search of better eavesdropping, just bask in the conversations that come your way.
• This activity should be done with a certain level of sensitivity to the subjects you are observing.
  

Step 3:

• If you are doing this with your team try to turn your notes into a simple presentation.
• You can also use what you listened to into an opportunity for training with the simple Human Centric Design tool, attached.
• When you listen to the conversations of others, what are your observations and interpretations of what people are saying?
• How could the needs that people reveal in their conversations be transformed into ideas and solutions?

Step 4: Reflection

Take time to reflect on what has emerged.

Reflection ideas (and come up with your own):

• What do you see?
• What do you sense?
• What's emerging?
• What do we need to stop doing?
• What do we need to start doing?
• By when?
• What else?