Was It a Wild Card or Just Our Blindness to Gradual Change Elina
Change blindness
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MaResCon: hands, brains & soul connected The black hole Do you know that feeling? You changed your hair and no one noticed it. You have new glasses but only few prudently guess something seems to be changed without pointing out what exactly is different. Unnoticed hair style changes or an unseen new pair of glasses are still to overcome. But being ‘unnoticed’ becomes a bit more frightening when we talk about huge investments, critical changes, technical or other adjustments meant to improve a service, to optimize a customer journey, to create a better experience. A few months ago a Belgian publisher asked us to conduct 8 focus groups to explore and to understand how the readers experienced the changes made in the newspaper(s). After the third group session: panic! None of the participant did refer to changes. The readers felt ok, did not have any remarks. A few mentioned that maybe possible maybe a newspaper section switched places … but that was it. The client felt insecure and a bit frustrated. But when we made the changes explicit to the readers at the end of the group session the adjustments were valued in a positive way! The changes
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Transcript of Change blindness
MaResCon: hands, brains & soul connected
The black hole
Do you know that feeling? You changed your hair and no one noticed it. You have new glasses but only few prudently guess something seems to be changed without pointing out what exactly is different. Unnoticed hair style changes or an unseen new pair of glasses are still to overcome. But being ‘unnoticed’ becomes a bit more frightening when we talk about huge investments, critical changes, technical or other adjustments meant to improve a service, to optimize a customer journey, to create a better experience.
A few months ago a Belgian publisher asked us to conduct 8 focus groups to explore and to understand how the readers experienced the changes made in the newspaper(s). After the third group session: panic! None of the participant did refer to changes. The readers felt ok, did not have any remarks. A few mentioned that maybe possible maybe a newspaper section switched places … but that was it.
The client felt insecure and a bit frustrated.
But when we made the changes explicit to the readers at the end of the group session the adjustments were valued in a positive way! The changes made were in fact appreciated, but it all passed below the consumer radar.
MaResCon: hands, brains & soul connected
The light
While analysing the qualitative data we felt the need for a strong case to explain the observed ‘blindness’ and to make that more tangible to the client.
We thought about the “Gorilla Experiment” but that is more about the selective attention. Searching for real blindness to change or the possible incapability to notice change, we found an interesting video demonstrating the concept of “change blindess” We used this case, did the test during the presentation and the client immediately understood what happened to their readers
What did the client learn? • Don’t overestimate your customers. your product or service is not the center of their universe (need to
put it into perspective). When you’re changing or adjusting, share it with your customers and inform why you’re making these changes.
What did we all learn? • It’s great to have small movie or a real live test to get your market research message across.
Frank Geers, Managing DirectorMaResCon Consulting. Hands, Brains and soul connected!
T 0032 497 523 528
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