Transcript:

Diary Studies: overview of our research tool

In this presentation, we're going to talk about mobile diary studies and why they are such a powerful research methodology, especially in the context of everything ‘going remote’.

At Indeemo what we do is we provide you with a technology platform to help you do research remotely. And really what we're helping you do is understand how people really behave in the everyday context of their lives, and also in the moment, so it's a very powerful way for you to almost use smartphones as a periscope, to capture real life human behavior.

You might be asking why diary studies? We're great fans, we're huge fans of diary studies here at Indeemo. And just before we talk about the benefits, I want to calibrate us against other alternatives. Okay, so the bread and butter of qual, historically has been either in person in depth interviews or focus groups which are very powerful and very useful in certain contexts.

What are the limitations of Focus Groups compared to Diary Studies

But to compare them to diary studies, what's happening here is the respondents are not in their everyday context. So they're in a facility with a two way mirror. So they're out of context.

The second thing is there are multiple people in the room, typically strangers, so they're more likely to be polite and less likely to be authentic in terms of what they show you and what they say to you.

And thirdly, a lot of what you're talking about in the focus group is post rationalization. So because it's not in the moment, they're usually reflecting back on historical events. So the data capture really is based on the memory, rather than in the moment behavior.

Now, obviously, with the onset of COVID-19, online focus groups have become very popular. But the same dynamic applies in this thing, actually, you're probably getting less data capture, because now what you're doing is you're missing body language, you're not able to read the room.

So while it's a good digital transition from focus groups to online, we feel that the lens here is too narrow, they're stationary at their laptop, they're not showing you what's happening in their everyday lives. They're not showing you how they're behaving in the moments. And as a result, again, it's partial data sets at best. When we think about mobile diary studies, there are a few attributes of the methodology which are extremely powerful, and which you should consider.

What are the benefits of using Diary Studies for UX and Market research

First of all, they take place in context, compared to a focus group where people might tell you what they think they do, or what they did in the past. Because this is in context, and with mobile diary studies, people showing you actually how they're behaving right now in their everyday lives. So if they're talking about breakfast, and they're standing in their kitchen, and they're showing you what they're having for breakfast, that's the truth.

It's also in the moment, so what you see with mobile diary studies, and again, leveraging video in particular, because they're showing you what they're doing right now when they're doing it so you cannot get closer to the reality of their actual behaviors. So again, if we take the context of shopping online, if you're doing a screen recording using Indeemo, and they're sitting on their sofa, and they're telling you what they're doing, compared to sitting in the UX lab, for example, they're much more authentic during their everyday context. And they're showing you how they would behave naturally.

In the context of online shopping. It's private. So unlike focus groups, there's nobody else in the room and the room is in context. So what we find with mobile diary studies is that it is one to one, it's probably the connection between you, the researcher and the individual respondents, because nobody else is watching, they're much more authentic, they're much more open.

And our customers tell us that they're almost confessional in terms of what they'll say to you, when they know there's nobody else watching. So it's a safe space for respondents to open up and show you what's actually going on in their lives.

Finally, and this is critical, it's longitudinal so again, through the lens of focus groups, or IDI’s versus diary studies, and a focus group or IDI, you get a limited time window, so it's 90 minutes typically in an IDI.

If you have six people in a 90 minute group, it's 15 minutes per respondent. So your time axis is incredibly tight. Your window is really just a snapshot of a moment in time. And it's capturing what they tell you on day two, because mobile diary studies are longitudinal and they can typically take place over days or weeks. Respondents show you what they do and how they behave repetitively. So again, going back to the context of breakfast, in a focus group, they'll tell you what they had for breakfast last Tuesday, in a one off event that show you what they're having for breakfast one day, but if you're doing a consumption diary over seven days, and they show you what they're having for breakfast every day, then that's the truth. Because it's in the moment, it's in the context, and they're showing you repetitively in a nutshell, you're capturing real life behavior in the moment, extremely authentic and repetitive nature of the data capture means that you actually prove behaviors back to the business or back to your customers.

Diary studies can be used for multiple qualitative and UX research methods

At Indeemo, we do multiple research methodologies so we can support you in any of the methodologies here. Online diary studies are a huge component of what we do. But you can also use the same technology and other research contexts. So it could be for pre tasking. It's a very subtle difference between a pre task and a diary study. For example, you can use this for bringing segmentations to life, you can use this for remote product testing, you can use our screen recording capability for remote usability testing. And again, we do a lot of studies, longitudinal studies where people are actually showing you the journeys they go on, whether it's in respect to a purchase journey, a customer journey, or how they're using your technology over a period of time. And the capability works both in b2b and b2c.

How does a Diary Studies tool work?

You recruit your respondents the same way you typically recruit for your UX lab session or a focus group or an idi, nothing changes.

The only difference is they use a smartphone app instead of talking to you face to face. It's really simple to use. So our technology feels more like a social networking app than a clunky piece of research technology. So what respondents do is in response to getting tasks from you. And then they're completing the tasks in these activities by posting photos or videos or screenshots, or open into text or screen recordings.

So think about it as an interactive digital diary of their behaviors over a period of time in relation to your research topic, and it works on an iPhone. It works on Android, it works on most smartphones, and it works on tablets. And video in particular is extremely powerful, immersing you in the lives of your respondents.

But more importantly be communicating back to the business and getting them to act on the insights that you capture as a result of the diary study.

How do you design tasks for Diary Studies

A couple of minutes on tasking. So the bread and butter of mobile diary studies really is tasking. What we do is we give them activities to do and then they get tasked to show you what they do in the moment by either taking photos, recording videos, uploading open ended texts, which we call notes or doing screen recordings. tasking can be delivered on a schedule, it could be 8am in the morning, and we can pop up a task that might be related to breakfast. Or tasking can be done sequentially in the linear fashion.

So that will be where you might want them to go on a particular user journey, or purchase journey, we drip feed the tasks to them in a linear sequence as they complete each task.

So think about that as the Russian doll of tasking. As soon as they upload their intro selfie, we will then release the next task. And once they complete that task, we'll show them the next task. It's incredibly powerful for multimarket research, you can embed stimulus videos, photos, or even links to surveys and tasks. And the key thing here is that at Indeemo, we will put a strategist on your project. And we will coach you and guide you on how best to use the technology to capture the data you need.

The benefits of Mobile Screen Recording in Diary Studies

One particular mention here is our mobile screen recording capabilities. So what we can do with screen recording is we can help you task respondents to get them to record online experiences. So this could be searching on Google for a particular product. It could be shopping on Amazon, it could be signing up to your app, it could be completing some user story on a prototype.

So when screen recording, essentially think about this as a remote UX lab where respondents fire off a screen recording. And we capture everything they do on screen. And we also capture their voice as they do it. So obviously, I've muted the video here for the presentation today. But with mobile screen recording, you get to watch them browse, watch them interact and hear their voices as they narrate their user experience. This also works on desktop as a Chrome plugin. All the data that is captured using diary studies is populated on our researcher dashboard. So think about this as a hybrid between Pinterest, and the private Facebook sitting on Dropbox. So extremely interactive. It's visually like Pinterest. It's interactive, like a private one to one Facebook, and stores all your media and all your data like Dropbox, you log in here as a researcher, your clients can log in as observers would read only access. And what you get here is all the data on a single beautiful dashboard with powerful filters to help you find the information you need. It even works on mobile. So you can moderate projects while you're on the move. You can interact with respondents. So when a respondent uploads a video or a picture of something, they said, you can actually comment on their posts right here, that sends them a push notification straight to the demo respondent app, they swipe on this, they reply and you get a notification back to your dashboard. So think about this as a private, intimate one to one Facebook between you and each respondent is nobody else in the room. So it's a very safe space for them to have a private conversation with you and show you exactly what's going on.

Tools for analysing qualitative data from Diary Studies

In relation to research topics, we offer powerful analytics via the technology. So on the dashboard, we have automated keyword tools that help you understand what themes are trending in the data. So we can generate a keyword cloud on the fly for any search. It could be the entire project level, it could be an individual task, or it could be an individual respondent. So we're doing some of the heavy lifting for you in terms of pointing you in the right direction as to what's trending in the data. And where this gets really powerful is not only does it work with the text that respondents type into the platform. It also works with automated video transcription, so our automated video transcription returns machine transcripts of videos to you, within three minutes, there were about 90 to 95% accurate depending on the background noise and depending on the language. And what it enables you to do essentially is turn lots of video into a keyword cloud.

So in this instance, I'm searching the video for makeup, we're highlighting where the words makeup appear, you can actually navigate the video forwards and backwards at the click of a button, click of a link. And you can trim out clips and download them for your report. So it's incredibly powerful, helping you understand video at scale at finding the right clips to include in your reports. So you can see you can actually get action on the insights that you report as a result of using our platform. This will save you days when it comes to your analysis. So that's pretty much it, including the Indeemo offering is not only do we give you the technology platform, which comprises the respondent app, and the researcher dashboard, we also hold your hand all the way through the process.

Let us support your next Diary Study

So we have amazing customer support, we will guide you in terms of task design, we do most of the heavy lifting for you on the project setup and will do all the tech support for you, your clients and your respondents. You get the app for the duration of your study, you get the dashboard for six weeks to do all your analysis and reporting. We export all the data for you so you can archive it at the end of the study. And we delete it from our servers or you can take other licenses. We can host the data for you and definitely we're HIPAA certified for Healthcare Research. We're ISO 27001 certified for information security. And the key thing here is we always go the extra mile. So if you'd like to learn more about diary studies and how we can support you with your next research project, please get in touch with the information here on screen and we look forward to hearing from you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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