Through personal interviews, moderator Pernille Vind is mapping how products and services are perceived by the users.

“What is it like to live with your disease?” The woman looks at the picture cards spread out on the table, picks a picture of a lizard and starts to cry: “It feels as if a scary and dangerous lizard is lurking and suddenly rushes at me.” A description that says a lot more than if the woman had answered: “It is unpleasant.” It is precisely for this reason that Pernille Vind uses Dialoogle when making qualitative market research.

Pernille Vind is a moderator and owner of the research company Perspective Lab. Through personal interviews, she is mapping how products and services are perceived by the users.

“It is essential for the manufacturers to have a profound knowledge of their customers, and how the customers perceive their products. For instance, for a pharmaceutical company I have made a study of what it is like to live with chronic arthritis which typically hits women in their thirties and how the company’s treatments are perceived by the patients,” Pernille tells us.

When people have translated their disease into pictures and symbols, they can suddenly see it from the outside and it becomes easier for them to talk about it.

When Pernille makes research in the pharmaceutical industry, she typically starts by asks the patients to choose a card illustrating what it is like to live with the disease that the medicine is trying to relieve or cure. From the picture, she asks elaborating questions to what the patients are telling her, and in this way, she gets a nuanced picture.

“When people have translated their disease into pictures and symbols, they can suddenly see it from the outside and it becomes easier for them to talk about it,” Pernille says.

Then Pernille asks the patients to tell her how the medicine affects them.

“Normally, the reply would be that it helps them to feel better. So instead, I ask them to find a picture card illustrating what the medicine means to them and talk about that based on the picture. For instance, when they choose a picture of a brilliant sunrise or a beautiful hot air balloon rising up against blue skies, I get a much stronger and more useful reply that also reflects their emotional links to the product.”

Pernille uses the most descriptive pictures when she presents her research to the pharmaceutical companies. Both patients and manufacturer move forward with the pictures they think have the strongest messages. When the woman who chose the lizard said goodbye to Pernille, she said with determination in her voice: “I’m going defeat that lizard!”