Stories and Computing
The method is this:
The method has been visualised below, using Mermaid. (Note: whilst GitHub supports Mermaid, GitHub Pages currently does not. The Mermaid code is included here in anticipation of future support and in anticipation of moving this material to a more accommodating platform…)
graph TD;
A[Look for names, people, roles, organisations] -->B;
B[List these names etc.]-->C;
C[Organise names into categories]-->D;
D[Review] -->A;
D -->B;
D -->C;
D -->E[Candidate stakeholders/personas]
Some questions to help in your use of the method are:
The Preface of the My Name is Why memoir serves as a suitable example for applying the method. The Preface comprises two pages (page 1 and 2 of the book). Due to copyright, the Preface is not reproduced here.
| Quote | Actor | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| “At fourteen I tattooed…” | The narrator, Lemn Sissay | |
| “The Authority…” | An organisation called The Authority | This name is unlikely to be the organisation’s actual name. |
| “… the click clack clack of a typewriter…” | Suggests a typist | This example is of an action, suggesting an actor, but who? |
| “Secret meetings were held…” | Suggests meeting attendees | Again, this is an example of an action, suggesting multiple actors |
| “Decisions were made…” | Suggests decision-makers | Again, who are these decision makers? |
| “… a data company called The Iron Mountain.” | An actual organisation | Given the use of “The Authority”, an obvious inference is that The Iron Mountain is a made-up name. |
| “… placed me with incapable foster parents.” | Unnamed, actual individuals | |
| “Chief Executive of Wigan Council, Donna Hall.” | A role, an institution and an individual | Three types of stakeholder are identified here. |
| “… moved me from institution to institution.” | Unnamed organisations | |
| “… no witnesses, no family.” | roles, unnamed family | Here there is a distinction between roles (witness, family) and named individuals |
| “I took The Authority to court.” | Unnamed individual, named institution, implied institution | This example is connecting three stakeholders. |
The analysis of the Preface identified the following types of stakeholders.
| Stakeholder type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Unnamed individuals | “me”, father, mother, foster parents |
| Named individuals | Donna Hall |
| Implied groups of people | Typists, people at meetings, bothers, sisters, aunts, uncles |
| Named groups of people | Ethiopians |
| Unnamed roles | Decision makers |
| Named roles | Chief Executive |
| Named services | Customer Service |
| Real-named organisations | Wigan Council, The Iron Mountain |
| Alternatively-named organisations | The Authority |
| Unnamed organisations | court, institutions |
The preceding discussion has introduced a simple method and briefly demonstrated the application of that method to a single chapter of the My Name is Why memoir. In the space of two short pages of the memoir, ten different types of stakeholder are identified. There are indications of how these stakeholders relate to each other, e.g., through familial relationship, decision making, or legal action.
As noted, the example is of one chapter. There are clearly scaling issues, i.e., as one analyses an increasing number of chapters so one develops an increasingly elaborate set of potential stakeholders. This is an example of how memoirs can act as a complex case study, and also how the memoir can be used for education, e.g., begin with one chapter, grow with several chapters, then scale up (potentially) to the whole memoir.
Immediate next steps are: