Upward Laddering: Overview

This software is for helping people to identify their preferences, and their higher-level goals. Often, people become too focused on low-level goals, and lose sight of the more important high-level goals, or don't think enough about the high-level goals. Using this approach can help the individual users to get a clearer understanding of what they really want. It is also useful for finding whether different people have the same higher-level goals, or different higher-level goals; this has significant implications for planning and for group decision making.

The software begins by showing the user a random pair of images from within an image set. The user then clicks on the image that they prefer. The software asks them why they prefer that image. When they respond, the software asks them why that issue is important to them. The software then offers them the choice to start again with different images from the same set, or to start again with images from a different set, or to stop.

The screenshot opposite shows the interaction steps after the user selected the image at the bottom of the screenshot.

As administrator, you can create your own image sets, and can choose which image sets to show to users. The images can include text, such as product names, or verbal scenarios.

The software records the choices that each user makes, together with their responses to the first question and the second question. This allows the administrator to analyse the responses systematically; for instance, to see how many users share a higher-level goal, or how many users share a lower-level goal, but then have different higher-level goals.