Integrating Design Principles as Thematic Analysis

By Bridget Woodbury & Jeff M. Poulin

Last month, the Young & Emerging Leaders Forum (YELF) - a program co-hosted by Creative Generation and the International Teaching Artists Collaborative (ITAC) - commenced their year-long program designed to establish a peer-to-peer network of young and emerging professionals within the fields of culture, education, and social change. (You can learn more about this program and its 2023-24 cohort here!)

As a core component of the program’s kick off meeting, and in alignment with strong practices of adult learning and cohort building, the group engaged in a participatory activity to establish the group guidelines by which they will operate in the coming year. Through a facilitated process, the two cohorts followed the program’s leader, Caryn Cooper, to generate responses to four prompts, using a web-based ideation platform.  The prompts were:

  • How do I want to feel in my YELF community?

  • What actions can I take to help my YELF community feel strong & inclusive?

  • What should we do if/when conflict arises?

  • What else should we consider/be thinking about as a group?

Using Creative Generation’s internal processes, which toggle between traditional research methods of quantitative and qualitative analysis and arts-based inquiry, the following group guidelines were developed:

Group Guidelines for YELF 2023-24:

  • I want to feel safe, challenged, heard, supported, empowered, and included.

  • I am here to listen, understand, encourage, and accept others.

  • We should collaborate and take action.

  • During conflict, we pause, listen, seek to understand, keep an open mind, and make and keep space.

The Process of Thematic Analysis Through Design Principles

Once the initial facilitation was complete, the artifacts were collected (two padlets of aggregated responses from all cohort members in response to the above prompts) and handed off to Bridget Woodbury for the dialogic analysis process to begin.

The process toggled, in a dialogic manner, between traditional research methods of quantitative and qualitative analysis and arts-based inquiry, including:

  • Thematic Analysis: a method for analyzing qualitative data that involves reading through a set of data and looking for patterns in the meaning of the data to find themes.

  • Design Principles: the use of the twelve basic principles of design: contrast, balance, emphasis, proportion, hierarchy, repetition, rhythm, pattern, white space, movement, variety, and unity. These visual and graphic design principles work together to create appealing and functional designs that make sense to users.

In short, the process went a little something like this:

  1. First the responses to each individual question were reviewed. Sufficiently similar answers were combined, erring on the side of keeping separate ideas distinct. This list of responses were coded in the manner of traditional thematic analysis by:

    • Cohort (A, B, or both)

    • Number of occurrences

  2. Using design principles each word was assigned a proportional font size and color based on frequency of use and by who

    • A word that appeared once in response to a given question is size 20; twice, size 24; three times, size 28; etc

    • A word that was only produced by Group A in response to a given question is blue, Group B is green, and both groups is pink

  3. Each quadrant was assigned a spectrum to establish, balance, hierarchy, and use of white space - words in color and proportion were placed accordingly.

  4. A visualization was produced and utilized to formulate the final output to make meaning from the conceptualized data.

How to read the above visualization:

  • Each quadrant represents the respondents answer to a prompt, simplified.

  • Each word is presented in a color: blue is group A, green is group B, and pink is both groups.

  • The size of each word correlates to the repetitive use within the data collection.

  • Within each quadrant, notice the placement of words based on the specific continuum within:

    • “I want to feel…” is on a continuum from brave to safe spaces (left to right)

    • “I am here to…” is on a continuum of level of dialogic engagement (center being most engaged, outer edges being lead engaged)

    • “We should…” is on a continuum of most active engagement at the center and most passive engagement at the edges.

    • “During conflict, we…” is on a continuum that reflects the full process of a conflict (top to bottom)

Making Sense of the Data

The continuums within the quadrants were devised based on the feeling of the array of words. The words that pop, either because of large size or bright color, foster rhythm, movement, and unity (design principles.  As a reader, you might consider:

  • What relationship do the words have to each other? 

  • Did the two groups use different words to illustrate the same concept? 

  • Are there two contrasting opinions that have similar weight that should be next to each other? 

Bridget’s goal for these graphics is to foster conversation between participants, so items are juxtaposed based on which ideas are in dialogue with each other, in the hopes that they allow the YELF folks to be in dialogue, as well. 

So, What?

As practitioners, many of us naturally identify patterns and themes; others process information in terms of design. Moving forward with a process, like this one, to uplift, aggregate, analyze, and present information opens up numerous pathways for practitioners of all types and learners of all styles.

We, at Creative Generation, are committed to our values and specifically uplift an integrated thematic and design analysis to deliver on these promises, like centering creativity and curiosity, honoring diversity and enabling radical inclusion, and valuing process over product.

We encourage every reader of this blog to think outside the box of traditional research as they approach (even small) tasks in their work - consider this: how might the use of creativity foster the type of environment you wish to create from the very start?