Barrier mapping with Ari Johnson

Play trailer - 1:35

Interview with care, and deep-read the results to help you uncover all the barriers facing the people you interact with.

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~50 minutes over 8 videos

About 3 hours of work to do it solo

Miwok territory, Graton Rancheria

tag: impact tag: interventions tag: interviewing

Lesson resources

Barrier mapping worksheet - Blank

This blank worksheet will help you keep track of all the work in this lesson.

Example interview transcripts

These are the example interview transcripts that Ari uses in this lesson.

1 Part 1: Muso, part 1.

This lesson is all about the power of deep reading on people’s personal stories. We start with hearing from Ari on his journey in Mali to develop the Barrier mapping process.

2 Define your patient.

The first real step in this process is to ‘define your patient.’ This is the person who will form the center of your map. The ‘patient’ will change greatly depending on your context; you might also say ‘user’ or ‘customer.’ It’s the person you care about, and are trying to help.

3 Part 3: Muso, part 2.

Back to Ari’s story with Muso.

4 Interviews.

Now that you have a definition of who you care about helping, it’s time to gather some interviews. This process can potentially be quite intense depending on who you’re working with, but regardless of who they are, Ari goes through the most important things to keep in mind when interviewing someone.

5 Close reading.

Close reading is the process of diving deep into the text of what someone has told you. It’s more than just listening to someone, its really interrogating what they’ve told you. This is an expansive process where you try to keep an open mind to what barriers they could be telling you, rather than what you assume.

6 Creating a map.

Now that you have a whole bunch of ideas for potential barriers from your patients its time to start thinking about the map you’re creating.

7 Muso, part 3.

In the the final chapter of the Muso story, Ari explains how they used what they learnt from their barrier mapping in creating their interventions in Mali.

8 Generating ideas.

Finally, with your created barrier map, its time for you to start generating ideas for your own interventions and solutions. The map is used as a jumping off point but ultimately it’s about seeing what works best for your patients.