People tell their stories. They show what matters.
Introducing Spryng · 1:45
People interpret their own experiences. Explore the patterns together, then decide what to try next.
One public service, different experiences, how do you understand what matters? Meet Spryng, a story-based research platform that helps you work out what to try next. Start with one question about a real experience. Design the study together, then invite people to contribute in their own words on a phone or in a facilitated session. People explain what their experience meant to them. They answer a simple visual question. showing how different factors shaped that experience. Their interpretation stays attached to the original story. In Spryng, choose a group of stories and see how the pattern changes. Then open a story behind the pattern. Read what happened. Compare it with a different experience. Bring questions back to the evidence, including the stories that challenge your first impression. What would you like to see more of? What would you like to see less of? Explore a different mix of stories, then discuss what you might try. This is a way to explore possibilities. Bring selected stories into a story pack for the team to explore together. Build a report that keeps the pattern and the experiences in view. Use the evidence to compare interpretations, question assumptions, and agree what deserves attention. Carry that discussion into a decision or an experiment with an action card linked to the evidence. Make the next step clear, then gather further experiences and return to the question, what are we learning? See it for yourself. Try pattern spotting at spryng.io, explore a pattern, and open a story. What would your team try next?
Transcript from the video’s caption track.One open prompt invites people to describe an experience, by link, QR code, voice, phone, or paper.
They place it on a few simple visual scales, so the meaning comes from them.
Your team explores the patterns, and every pattern opens onto the stories behind it.
Choose a filter, explore a chart, then open a story to hear the experience behind the pattern. This preview uses sample data, not findings from your community. No sign-up needed.
Open the full workspaceLoading the analysis preview.
Queen’s University and IOM used Spryng to understand women’s and girls’ migration experiences in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. Laurie Webster of QED Insight supported the study’s setup, data monitoring and analysis.
Read the migration studyDr. Robin Pharoah and Future Agenda gathered accounts from 30 former service personnel for Forces in Mind Trust. Participants used Spryng to share and interpret their experiences, informing a model of the transition to civilian life.
Read Robin Pharoah’s reportUniversity of Kansas CPPR gathered 2,279 stories from all 105 Kansas counties, bringing families’ experiences into community sensemaking workshops and local action labs. Spryng was one of the platforms used in the project.
Read the project account and its limitsMailed surveys came back once or twice a year. With Spryng, including phone and paper for people without computer access, the tribunal heard from enough appellants to act, and changed how hearings are prepared. Premier's Award, Evidence Based Design.
See how it works for public serviceEmergency-medicine researchers collected 2,114 experiences of emergency care from 1,973 people and published their findings in BMC Health Services Research and PLOS Mental Health.
Read the BMC Health Services Research paperRead the PLOS Mental Health paperWhat changes when you keep people’s stories behind the patterns?
Discover what you hadn’t thought to ask
“We heard all sorts of things we didn't know we needed to ask about.”
“We also found out things that we're doing that worked really well and that people liked…”
Emily describes learning what to preserve as well as what to change in the tribunal’s service.
Build trust through listening
“To listen to and honor their story is a gift that generates trust. To make sense of their story in the context of everyone's stories, is wisdom.”
“To invite someone to share a story is a sign of respect, a gesture that signals you are willing to listen.”
From his reflection on stories, context and collective sensemaking.
Go beyond a description of events
“…it's telling the story that made you feel something…”
“That's another really interesting aspect to the questions is that they're evaluative, so they're not just reporting.”
At 10:22, Glenda explores how people interpret an experience, rather than only describe what happened.
Make room for a shared reality
“And I found it really, really beneficial in trying to establish what I call shared reality…”
“…a way for people to start then questioning their own reality and creating something that they can share and trying to move forward with that.”
On her experience with sensemaking, using Spryng and other tools. In the example at 43:29, a group questioned its assumptions about generational differences.
Give people agency in the process
“They had agency and ownership within the program.”
“And then because athletes will then see change, they were more willing to buy in with even more ability to share stories in the future because they trust the process.”
At 17:21, Danny reflects on listening and responding to athletes. On using sensemaking to understand the individual stories behind patterns in sport.
Keep the story behind the chart
“…that ability to point to a point on a graph or one of the triangles and say look, this is why it's there and show people the story that is behind it. That's very powerful.”
“And what the Spryng platform initially gave me was a way of illustrating that there was complexity behind what I was doing.”
At 07:34 and 11:00, Robin describes how Spryng complements his ethnographic fieldwork.
Elise · New Rules for Work
Elise from New Rules for Work on exploring experience together.
We used Spryng to collect feedback on a conference we ran around creativity and teamwork and all of the things we might know about how to make those things work well. And the conference itself was a giant experiment. We were bringing together people from different worldviews, different expertise, different sides of the planet. We had really no idea how to pull all of this off in a way that was both rewarding for the participants, manageable for our team, and helped us achieve the results that we were after. So we partnered with Spryng to collect feedback throughout our three-day all-online event from the participants and the presenters about their experience and their goals and what they hoped would happen. Now in the past when I've run events, we've used typical surveys, you know, how would you rate this event on a scale of one to five and all of that. And while we had some of that was Spryng, It was really the narrative sense-making that made the big difference. Using and collecting micro-stories helped us understand how our design choices and our interaction models impacted people from different worldviews in ways that we would never have ever found out by using simple numeric-based ratings. Also, the process of reviewing that data together afterwards helped us understand not only how we each interpreted those stories, but what those stories meant for the subsequent events we held on the same topic. So it was an invaluable resource that I
Transcript from the video’s caption track.Tonya · Brave Voices, Brave Choices
Tonya from Brave Voices, Brave Choices on listening to community experience.
We collected over stories 300 and are feeding them back to the community so that they can begin to understand what types of incidents are happening here in Howard County. And I should say that there are stories of hope also, right? That people say, these are ways that we can work together. Here's the proof, right? Here's what I experienced. Here are the things we need to amplify and make sure that are spreading across the community, these types of things. Um, and, and, you know, the, the storyteller, the person who submits their narrative, um, is given the opportunity to say who they think this story should be shared with, right? Is it leaders at the library? Is it leaders in County government? Is it the school system or medical professionals, whatever that is. And, and we are going to make sure that we do that, right. That we get those stories to those folks. Um, so they understand what the community experience is that they may not be aware of.
Transcript from the video’s caption track.For tribunals, agencies, and program offices that need to hear from the people a service is meant for, including those who never answer a survey.
Public serviceFor research teams studying lived experience who need mixed-methods data that participants interpret themselves and that holds up to ethics review.
ResearchFor facilitators, coaches, and OD practitioners who want a room to share real experiences safely and see the patterns together.
PractitionersAssistant connections · Preview
Examine patterns and permitted stories, with references back to the evidence. Connect a local model or an approved cloud assistant. Study storage and statistics remain on Spryng.
Spryng is a poor fit when you need a benchmark, a score tracked over time, or large-n statistics on a closed question. A survey is the better tool for those decisions.
When a survey is the better toolChanges people recognize as theirs. Staff who have seen the issue firsthand. A record you can explain to anyone who asks. A listening cycle you can repeat.
Changes that miss the point. Quiet groups left unheard. Decisions that are hard to explain. Trust that wears down when people feel unheard.
Spryng's AI-assisted features are transcription, translation and redaction of responses, and the optional AI Pattern Synthesis add-on. Each is optional. An account owner can ask us to turn any of them off for their organization by emailing privacy@spryng.io, and we confirm in writing when it is done. Turning off AI redaction does not turn off rule-based redaction.
Tell us what you are trying to understand and who you need to hear from. We will help you scope a bounded first study, and tell you if a survey would serve you better.