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The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) is a patented research tool which allows people to understand their own thinking more fully and to share this thinking with researchers. It surfaces basic constructs or ideas and the connections among them and does so in a way that is user friendly. ZMET is built on current research and thinking in such diverse fields as cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology, art and literary criticism, visual anthropology, visual sociology, semiotics, the philosophy of mind, art therapy, and psycholinguistics. This knowledge is used to structure a guided interview with consumers or with managers. Before describing the interview, it is important to identify some of ZMET's central premises. These premises are presented here only as summary statements. Most social communication is nonverbal. Thoughts occur as images. Metaphors are central to cognition. Cognition is grounded in embodied experience. Deep structures of thought can be accessed. Associated thoughts as causal models. Reason, emotion, and experience co-mingle. The mind is not the possession of the individual These and other premises are used to create an architecture that leads people in an exploration of their thoughts and feelings. It begins by having each consumer or manager collect a minimum of eight pictures representing their thoughts and feelings about the topic to be researched. Pictures came from sources such as family albums, catalogues, magazines, or photographs taken specifically for the interview. It is essential that people seek or collect their own pictures rather than select from images provided by a researcher. Most participants report spending about six to seven hours over several days thinking about the assignment and locating pictures. Many comment on their high level of involvement. Thus they arrive for their interview at an advanced stage of thinking. The one-on-one, face-to-face interview takes approximately two hours. It involves several steps carefully designed to engage different aspects of a customer's thought process and allows deep, often hidden ideas to emerge. At the same time, each step provides a degree of overlap with at least one other step. When different steps surface the same idea, we can be more confident about their significance. The interview procedure increases the likelihood of uncovering important ideas, provides convergent validation for ideas, and permits an assessment of their salience to participants. Stated differently, this technique, based on current thinking in several disciplines, helps people discover their own deep thoughts and feelings and the associations among them. Interviewers specifically trained for using ZMET are required. Each project involves an R&D component about the basic technique. This ensures continual improvement in ZMET as experience is gained with diverse applications and as learning occurs from research in parent fields.</body>]]>