Consequences in Simulator

Consequences explain the impact of a choice made in Simulator to a participant. An effective Simulator contains realistic, specific consequences which give participants a greater understanding of the issues raised in your Simulator and the potential outcome of the choices they're making as they take part.

Note: We can change the label for 'Consequences' in your Simulator. Many of our customers use other options such as 'Impact' or 'Service impact'. You can discuss this with your customer success manager prior to launching your Simulator.

Where a consequence appears

When a participant moves a slider, a brief summary of the consequence for each incremental change appears on the right. The participant can choose to read a more detailed description of each consequence by selecting the ‘More...’ link.

Simulator budget screenshot showing 'Consequences'. For example, if there is a 0% change to the Libraries slider, then the consequences of no change means opening times will not change. Ordering new stock such as DVDs and digital material will progress slowly. The respondent can select 'More...' to read further consequences at this slider point.

Adding consequences to your Simulator

You'll first add your Simulator's groups and sliders, then write the consequences for each slider. Make your consequences accurate and specific to bring the subject of your Simulator to life for your participants, and help them to understand the choices your organisation has to make.

Every increment has a consequence, and each consequence has 2 parts:

  • Summary: a brief explanation of the consequence of the change. This has a 140 character limit.

  • Full details: more information on the consequence of the change (which the participant reads when selecting the 'More' link). This is optional. It has no character limit, so you can add as much information here as you think will be helpful to participants. 

    When adding a consequence on the admin side, you have an option to include a summary (highly recommended) as this will appear next to the slider for that particular increment. Then there is an option to include full details, which will be presented if the respondents selects the 'More...' link for the consequence.

Consequence template

We've attached a consequence template below, which could be useful if: 

  • You're gathering information from many people across many departments. The template can be shared, edited and sent back easily without the need to create admin passwords for your Simulator. 
  • You'd like one place to hold all written content, to help you to check it for consistency and accuracy before adding it to your Simulator.
  • You need one person to sign off on the content before it's added to your Simulator.

The template gives you a basic structure to help you manage your Simulator's content. Copy and paste the template as many times as you need, one template per slider, to gradually build one document containing all of your content.

Download the Consequences template (.docx 20 KB)