Can you sum up the project?

‘Global Values: Where Do You Fit’? is a quiz-like experience that asks some simple questions, rooted in scientifically validated scales, to work out your ‘values’. The guiding principles by which you live your life. These are then contextualised with information about how they relate to others and why they matter - with people invited to share and compare their results.

How was it created?

For the Tomorrow's World campaign, I became interested in why people cared about some aspects of science & technology but not others. I wanted to know why people would prioritise some improvements in society over other ones. Speaking to researchers at the Cathie Marsh Institute at Manchester University, I became aware of the Theory of Basic Human Values, and thought this might be an interesting way for to examine one's motivations for the way we live our lives. One researcher who has used these instruments to understand things like fake news, attitude to vaccination and climate change is Sander van der Linden at Cambridge University. He helped me develop the project greatly.

Once we had the scientific basis, we worked with Roll Studio to develop a format that would be simple and enjoyable to complete. Having established the need to visualise values in an engaging and comparable way - we settled on the idea of the ‘Flower’ visual that builds up as questions are answered. That then became the core aesthetic throughout - and the way by which we could encourage and make clear the various comparisons we were trying to make

What challenges did you face?

Visualising something as abstract as values was difficult - so we tried to find something that was beautiful but also conveyed some of the core information we were able to pull out like dominant values and how the ‘groupings’ can identify broader types.

It was also a challenge turning a questionnaire designed for science into something more engaging. It was vital the integrity was maintained, so instead we looked at bringing in some ‘delight’ in the UX - the input methods and the visuals to help draw a user through the experience.

What do you hope to learn from it being on Taster?

We want to establish audience appetite for this type of approach, but also engagement with this complex topic. We will know we have succeeded if we see lots of people going through the full question set - and also if they go on to share and compare their individual results

What next?

This is just one part of a wider experience - so we hope this project sparks a wider interest in the subject matter that can be further explored and satisfied by some of the other projects being developed to go alongside.