Who is this?
I’m Alison MacLeod and I’m a research consultant based in south-east England. I specialise in using qualitative research (interviews, focus groups, workshops) to understand how people relate to technology, science and issues in the workplace.
A bit about my background
I’m a psychologist by background, with a degree and Ph.D in Psychology and more recently an MA in Occupational and Organizational Psychology. I moved out of academic research into market research, and started my career doing classic qualitative research on packaging design, retail and advertising. From this stage of my life, I know more than is really decent about the semiotics of Hula Hoop packaging.
Eventually, I got tired of all the late nights and curly sandwiches, and moved into business and public sector research, managing big quantitative and qualitative projects within a large London agency, Research International.
In 1999 I moved onto the client side as research manager for DuPont. I have to say, this more or less changed my career. I became fascinated with how the public make sense of science and technology. Why did certain people distrust the MMR vaccine, for example, when the scientific evidence cleared it of any association with childhood autism?
At the same time, I saw that understanding and reacting to customer and user perceptions could be very difficult for organisations. I’d already seen this in employee attitude research, but it also held true for marketing communications and new product development. Companies (and public sector organisations, for that matter) often find it very difficult to understand how their end users think.
I started being interested in website design and communication in the late 90s. In those days, corporate websites were all about beauty, not effectiveness. At the same time while conventional organisations were struggling to understand the web, amateur users and small businesses were building sites and applications that really addressed user needs.
While it was hugely instructive to manage research, for me nothing quite beats the buzz of doing it. So, in 2001 I started a consultancy. I’ve managed about 60 projects since then, mostly qualitative in nature. Alongside this, I also completed a Masters in Occupational and Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London. I can recommend taught MSc.s to everyone: they’re hugely painful and very inspiring.
Disclaimer
I work both directly with clients and as a consultant for other agencies. All the views expressed here are mine and mine alone and shouldn’t be taken as representing the views of any other organisation with which I’ve been associated.
Contact
You can email me:
alison [AT] thehumanelement [DOT] co [DOT] uk
Or call:
(44) 1223 569862
