Engaging Heads Hearts and Minds

Heads Hearts and Minds

Copyright Jon Bryant 2015

My mentor the creator of the Andrex puppy adds, Captain Birds eye and the iconic Old Spice surfer campaign taught me the value of understanding the Heads Hearts and Minds of any audience you wish to talk to.

With 35 years of corporate programme making under my belt I have had to communicate with virtually every audience imaginable, over time you learn to speak “their language” and almost instinctively ask the right questions and listen to get inside their thought processes at an emotional level.

To me this is a very informal gut instinct human process, I should add that I have dyslexia so left school with one O level in art, so I don’t follow the academic route when it comes to research. 

For me the test of a programme is simple… does it work for its intended audience? This being far more important than making it work for the commissioner, that is the only evidence base I have ever needed, you are only as good as your last video production in my line of work.

Then along came this project…. When you find yourself talking to a mother whose 16 year old boy hung himself just a few months previously it becomes very real and you realise the stakes you are playing for…it was very grounding and humbling experience.

I have some insight into an audience with learning disabilities having converted a 40 page legal tenancy agreement in to a “see and hear” version for supported living tenants. So I had already faced the daunting challenge faced in communicating to as wider audience as possible across the LD spectrum.  I worked with a group of about 10 supported living tenants who were my very willing testers as I refined my ideas.

But this project was not about rules, rights and regulations, but pure emotion. So for my research as the director there was the more practical quantifiable stuff like visual language to establish and where it should be pitched in terms of its complexity but that only part of the task.

The other aspect to my “research” was better understanding what it is like for a person with a learning disability to have these feelings and how to express them. I did a lot of my learning via twitter just joining in to conversations, asking questions and trying to get insight in to the person with a learning disability through the eyes of their principle carer.  In time I started exchanging emails with some of these twitter contacts and spoke to a few by phone as well.

Two mothers came forwards who really added hugely to my understanding so big thanks to them.  One had very recently lost her 16 year old son, he was on the high functioning end of the spectrum and via his mum I learned so much about what made him happy and how he communicated finding text and chat far easier than face to face.

The other mother has a daughter with autism, who could do very little for herself although she was getting a lot of life skills coaching, she was prone to regular bouts of severe depression. 

Her mum said there was one thing her daughter was proficient at, one life skill where she showed her ability to plan, organize and think ahead…and that was attempting to take her own life often several times a month. As a result of deliberately overdosing on her prescribed meds she now has further damage to contend with.

I also came to the conclusion that I had to be realistic regards where I targeted the programme, some people were going to fall outside the envelope of what I could hope to achieve with a video that was targeting the “middle way” in order to work for as wider audience as possible.

On the more practical side I created some sheets with images on and asked our test group to tell me which best summed up various feelings, the results were surprisingly unambiguous which made my job a lot easier.  We also ran a Survey Monkey aimed at carers in an attempt to get as wider input as possible as they were my secondary audience.

With a better understanding of the task ahead I set myself the goal of the programme working with or without sound, or as just a soundtrack. The idea being that no matter how people learned best I had covered all the bases.

After developing the character we showed short clips to our testers via Speak Out, I didn’t want it to be too real as this might appear threatening, nor did I want to reduce it to cartoons as that I felt that was too abstract and hard to identify with.  I spent a long time refining the eyes, based on feedback from my testers, they said they were too intense so I muted the colour and also the time the character spent looking directly at the viewer, mindful of those on that end of the autistic spectrum.

During development I tried to ensure every aspect of what appeared on screen was correct for the job in hand. I spent a good deal of time looking at many typefaces, I know from my own experience with dyslexia that some fonts are just easier to process, this combined with the right choice of words gave me the best option in terms of reach.

My final choice of font Architect Small Block had all the right characteristics and was developed for its legibility for people with learning disabilities, it has a friendly approachable, handwritten quality to it and compared to similar style fonts ticked all the boxes. There is a very helpful blog by a typographer that I have included in our research that explains why it is so legible.

The last element is the scripting and the voice over, we tested several delivery styles and where we pitched it in terms of simplicity. It is a fine line between sounding patronizing and ensuring that you are not loosing one part of your audience for the sake of another. It took time to fine the right balance, and feedback thus far seems to indicate we are in the right zone.

I have suggested a review in 6 months time when we have a sufficiently wide enough pool of feedback from our target audience to see if there are areas we can improve on. Unlike other commercial projects this is not about creating something that it fun and entertaining…it’s all about engagement and retention, and getting that message across in a sensitive, lucid and gentle manner. I was through out all too well aware of the emotional state of my viewers in dealing with such powerful and emotive subject.

UPDATE 

Very Excited!  Its now October 1st 2015 and I have been invited to present the toolkit at the prestigious Kings College to and audience of LD clinicians at the end of this month, in my terms we are really gaining traction at last and it finally feels real! 

During the pilot phase and after having recieved clinical sign off from the Brighton and Hove Councils LD team we have received nothing but great feedback from all directions including Professors of Learning disabilities,  Lead LD Nurses in the NHS, LD clinicians, WeLDNurses, Dr's, Universities, major charities and the well known voices in suicide prevention here and around the world. 

So after what started as a very personal challenge and a desire to give a little something back the feedback has done a lot to validate my thinking! phew:)  its always scary stepping into other peoples areas of expertise to present your vision for something armed with nothing but a vision and zero qualifications.

The current version is targeted is focused on the UK, there is an affordable option to "customise it so the voice over can be in a more local dialect, or targets a particular community, or even in another language. The same applies to the text and resources. 

We would love you to register your interest especially if you are NHS people (this will help us make the case for it to be made available nationwide). 
As many have observed the tool kit is also a unique way of facilitating important discussions about life events, feelings and fears its not just a public information tool. 

I will be posting some real world experiences of an NHS team in the coming months to show how its been deployed. 

If you want to start using the toolkit or want to know more about it you can contact me via Twitter @Chicustard ...don't ask but I will tell you one day:) 

Or drop me an email jon.bryant@btclick.com

Grassroots Suicide Prevention      http://www.prevent-suicide.org.uk
is the charity behind this, they have also produced an award winning suicide prevention app and one of our next goals is to seek funding to include the LD suicide prevention toolkit with that app.  

Jon Bryant    Creator and Director of the toolkit.

                                                                             Copyright Jon Bryant 2018