Concept
Micro-narrative
Also: micronarrative, micro-narratives, small stories, anecdote
A micro-narrative is a short story about one real moment, told in a person's own words and usually interpreted by them, collected in large numbers to reveal patterns.
A micro-narrative is small on purpose. Not a case study, not an interview transcript, not a carefully told company story: a few sentences about one moment someone actually experienced. For example: "A customer called to cancel. I could have kept her with a small discount, but I'm not allowed to offer one, so I let her go."
Why small stories work
People remember moments, not averages. Asked "how satisfied are you with our processes, from 1 to 10?", they give a polite number. Asked "tell us about a moment last week when something went well or badly", they tell you what happened. Short stories are also easy to share, so you can collect hundreds or thousands of them instead of a handful.
The storyteller interprets it
In narrative research such as SenseMaker, the person who tells the story also interprets it: they place it on a few simple scales, for example whether it was about speed, care or rules. This is called self-signification. It means the meaning comes from the person who lived it, not from a researcher reading it later.
From one story to a pattern
One micro-narrative is an anecdote. Five hundred, each interpreted by its teller, are data. You can see clusters, outlier opinions and non-dominant narratives, and every pattern still links back to the stories behind it. That's what makes the findings concrete enough to act on.