Using Rich Pictures

The idea of asking participants to create “rich pictures” developed from a general assumption that artwork can be a rich source of qualitative data.

Rich pictures are a technique used in technology that originated in Checkland’s 1981 Soft Systems Methodology as a way of identifying multiple viewpoints of a situation. They allow people to engage with problem solving or creative thinking “because our intuitive consciousness communicates more easily in impressions and symbols than in words” (Open University, 2005). In the systems context, a rich picture is used according to a well-defined framework of elements: pictorial symbols, keywords, cartoons, sketches, symbols, title. The conventions are that elements are chosen to represent a situation, using as many colours as are necessary, adding connections (e.g. with lines and arrows) and avoiding too much writing commentary. It would appear that the most benefit in creating rich pictures can be obtained with the support of a set of guidelines and in group situations (Open University, 2005). Rich pictures are becoming established in many educational contexts, where a university teaching environment seems ideal for teaching and supporting the technique. Campbell Williams and Dobson (1995) used rich pictures, along with encouraging exploration of novel metaphors, as an adjunct to learning journals with students pursuing a course of business computing and found it opened up new ways for students to express and represent themselves. As a tool for reflection, rich pictures have also been used with the purpose of promoting deep learning, which is said to be characterised by seeking meaning and establishing relationships between areas of knowledge (Horan, 2000; Vanasupaa et al., 2008).

The techniques of “rich picture” have evolved along a separate path from “artwork”. However, they share the fundamental aim of facilitating and encouraging potentially untapped wells of human experience by by-passing the everyday route of verbal expression that is shackled by a combination of vocabulary constraints, cultural backdrop and the natural limitations of self-awareness and self-expression. Rich pictures were appealing for the mentor study in the sense that they provided an opportunity for participants to acknowledge the different players and entities that they interacted with, and to focus on the relationships between them. One of the drawbacks of using the technique is that there was limited time to explain the rationale and guidelines for creating rich pictures, and the instructions had to be given amid a discussion of the event diary as a whole. Participants would be in a situation of having to take in a number of different instructions for completing their event diary, which they would be doing possibly in the course of a day’s work, and out of immediate contact with the researcher. The use of samples was identified as a quick way of passing on information about what a rich picture could look like and how one might be constructed. For this purpose, sample rich pictures were created by the researcher.




Introducing rich pictures to participants
Where an event is primarily constituted by people and interactions between them, the elements of pictorial symbols, keywords, cartoons, sketches and symbols can feel obscure and difficult to represent (drawing on personal experience of thinking and reading about rich pictures). Therefore, I set myself the challenge of creating a rich picture of a telephone conversation, where the only significant physical component was the telephone, but where there was an obvious emotional dimension to the event. I aimed to complete the picture in ten minutes and stopped after that time, so that I would feel able to present the task to participants as being manageable in that space of time. I decided not to use colour, due to the time constraints and because of the spontaneity of capturing the moment. I later created a second rich picture (also restricted to 10 minutes) of a more mundane situation, a meeting at work, which captured a completely different type of scenario (and incidentally revealed new insights for me into how people contribute and interact in meetings). I was subsequently able to take these two samples to the research interviews and use them as tools for introducing and explaining the rich picture.

In the interviews themselves, at the time I was explaining the event diary, I made sure that I had covered the event description and the feelings questionnaire thoroughly and checked that the participant had understood before moving onto the rich picture. It felt at the time that talking about pictures presented the danger of cognitive overload, given the other demands. I was also aware that participant responses to a request to draw tended to be laced with coyness or reticence, so I was keen to emphasise that the diary was quite acceptable without a picture, and that a picture was an optional, albeit desirable, extra. I played down the need for any particular skill in creating a rich picture, and for that reason approached the “rules” for rich pictures with a very light touch. The emphasis was on capturing the moment in whatever way they could.