Dana Slaughter is next up, presenting a number of mini-case studies of qualitative mobile around the world: In the Moment with Mobile. Case studies came from a dozen or so individual researchers who contributed cases.
Mobile is now typically an add-on to an online qualitative platform, although there are a few dedicated mobile-only platforms.
- For grocery shopping, participants were asked to use their smart phone for tasks related to grocery shopping, such as price comparisons, using bar codes.
- Capturing activity in context, such as drinking beer at Oktoberfest.
- Breakfast experience in limited service hotels, to understand the breakfast context for a waffle batter provider
- Seasonal merchandising in the retail environment. What do people notice in terms of assortment, items, signage, etc. What is adding or taking away from the shopping experience?
- Personal care occasions, such as leg care/hair removal for women
- Moments of connection for new parents -- an intimate moment that would be hard to capture through other approaches
- Employee communications over time -- multiple experiences captured in the moment
- Events - Superbowl-watching experience
Mobile can be used at the front end, at the back end, or as the major part of a study. Mobile offers potential for spontaneity, for insights captured in the moment of experience, and for insights captured right in the context of experience. More transparency and fewer boundaries.
An interesting audience question: can you do live mobile, with probing in the moment? According to Dana, not all platforms permit probing. Some of it can be pretty close to in the moment, but right now there is a lot of online followup.
Coffee-break conversation insight: You cannot define qualitative and quantatitve by the method of data collection. It is more useful to define them as methods of analysis.
Next up, a panel discussion with Susan Saurage-Altenloh (Saurage Research), Ben Smithee (Spych Research), and Kathy Doyle (Doyle Research Associates), all qualitative specialists with varying perspectives. One of the biggest changes is that there are so many choices in technology for study design, and a lot more data. Better access to respondents is possible.
In the consumer's quest to find information, they provide a lot of information to us. In that sense, consumers are driving the insights process more than ever before. Instead of asking questions, we are now listening more -- this is a huge shift, which is leading to more effective research.
The data collection piece is becoming easier, so as researchers we have to ask what value we add to the process. Methodology is not as important as insight -- how can you find out what we need to solve?
Lines are blurring, (between qual and quant) or are they? Quali-quant became multi-method begat hybrid. But the possibilities for hybrid methodologies are much greater today because of new methods and technologies. You can analyze social media qualitatively OR quantitatively. It may be that researchers are the ones holding on to these distinctions.
Communities designed for insight purposes are still building brand loyalty (if branded) or category loyalty (if unbranded) -- even if marketing advocacy is not the goal, it happens anyway.
Interesting quote: "If we want people to call us brand partners, we need to stop calling them clients."
Ricardo Lopez of HIspanic Research is going to show us The Tools of a Qualitative Research Techie
Evernote: Gives you access to all your information, everywhere. All information is indexed. Take a picture with your phone, and immediately put it on Evernote, and use this system to instantly capture project photos (e.g. flipcharts.) Evernote recognizes the names of photos, even in handwriting. E-mail forwarding lets you store and save mail that you might want to later reference. You can even assign it to a folder when you do this.
"If you were to go back to the 1970s and show someone one of these Star Trek communicators that we carry around, it would look like magic."
Zendone: A new company that has taken the GTD organizing approach and has applied it to Evernote. He uses it, along with Google calendar and Evernote to process his inbox and manage to-do lists.
Livescribe Echo pen works with desktop software. Livescribe Sky pen works with Evernote only, not via the desktop. It connects to the internet with no cable. This technology is very useful for conducting interviews. It also integrates with Evernote. You can take notes later when you are playing back, and those notes are also linked to the recording. This makes the tool very useful for the analysis.
Video for qualitative has always been extremely useful. With bulletin boards, Ricardo asks all his questions using video to increase participant engagement. He told a great story about recording a video introduction in his office, when his two-year-old walked into the room. Ricardo posted his son singing a Christmas song, and everyone responded by posting videos of their kids during the introduction. It completely changed the whole perspective and tone. So now he does this as a regular practice!
Depending on the platform, you can force respondents to respond in video.
It really pays to have a high-end webcam, for good quality video. Don't use the one that comes with your laptop. A cell phone is even superior, usually.
A challenge with respondent video is the number of different formats. The platform may capture in Flash, a difficult format to work with later. He typically asks them to send the video, and he will figure out what to do with it. Handbrake is software that will convert video formats, but it takes some learning.
He cautions that clients often have old versions of software, and to be cautious about embedding video into PowerPoint. Instead, he uses a Vimeo account, and puts the links into PowerPoint.
For basic video editing, he says your on-board editor is probably fine. To create a video report, he likes Power Director (Mac).
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