Impact Trust • Working glossary

SenseMaker (tool)

A platform where people share stories and interpret the meaning themselves.

Details

Our Take
Creating patterns from many self-interpreted narratives. The tool name is self-explanatory; the methodology (distributed ethnography, self-signification, narrative pattern analysis) is where the complexity lives. Offers a way to hear from communities at scale without reducing their experience to survey data.
Examples of Use
Cynefin Centre, evaluation, humanitarian M&E
Synonyms/Variants
Narrative-based evaluation; Distributed ethnography tool; Story-based monitoring
Typical everyday wording
A tool where people share and interpret their own stories