Psychologist Tom Guarriello explains why he uses YouTube to study how people actually think and talk. He describes Imaginee, a company that shows photos to measure emotional responses, but argues that letting people create their own images is more revealing. He invites viewers to submit visual answers to the question: what does freedom look like to you?
Well, hey guys, good morning, it's Tom. Anybody who's been watching my videos for any period of time, well, maybe, maybe you had to have been watching some of my very earliest videos, would know that one of the main reasons that I became interested in YouTube was because it looked to me like a great way for me and for companies like my clients to get a real insight into the way real people live. What we think about, what we talk about, things that are important to us, inadvertent things that we just sort of lightly touch on that are really very important to us. That can really help companies to figure out how to be more effective in connecting with us. That's what I do, is to help my client companies to become more effective at developing their relationships with customers and to help them to develop products and services and experiences that those customers are really going to love. Well, a couple of days ago in the Wall Street Journal, there was an article about a company named Imaginee. IMI. I'll post it over here. Anyway, and what Imaginee does is to present visitors to its website with a bunch of photographs and to ask them which of the photographs most closely expresses their emotions or their, their associations when they are asked questions. 'If I had an extra hour,' 'This is,' you know, 'fun is,' and so on. And that's kind of interesting. I mean, it's, you know, I'm a psychologist, and so it's kind of like— I think somebody put it, it's kind of like a visual Rorschach. It's kind of like a— well, all Rorschachs are visual, so it's sort of a— anyway, so yeah, that's interesting, but it's not nearly as interesting to me as giving people the opportunity to make their own depictions of answers to questions and things that are important to us. So anyway, the question I wanted to pose in this video for anybody who's interested in doing so: I'd love to see non-verbal, just purely visual depictions by anybody who chooses to do so, of answers to the— to filling in the end of the sentence, "Freedom is..." And then having visual responses that somehow capture your response to that statement. Freedom is, and then something visual that you think captures that. It might be fun. I'm certainly interested in seeing what you guys come up with. So thanks a lot, and see you again soon. Take care. Bye.
