How to use Online qualitative tools
So much more than online groups - here are 7 ways you can integrate online qualitative into your projects:
1. Finding out what people are thinking and feeling NOW by searching and analysing existing content
Before you start a project, familiarise yourself what is happening. Keep tabs on trends in the market
So much more than Google, there is a large range of (often free) tools to search, retrieve, count, monitor and analyse information
from blogs, user groups, social networks, websites etc.
- You can find top trends, tags, images, locations and positive and negative sentiment
- You can analyse large quantities of text using natural language processing to extract significant meaning
- You can assess the 'sociability' of items - how quickly they spread
- You can set up alerts to know when something has changed.
Key words: Buzz tracking, text mining, content analytics, sentiment analysis
2. Netnography or Webnography - so new they haven't named it yet
The study of naturally occurring groups on the web - search to identify relevant groups, filter conversations,
collect artefacts and analyse your field notes.
Beware - fraught with ethical, validity and data protection issues.
Ethnography Lite tools - accompanied shopping moves into the 21st Century
- Capture transactional, marketing and incidental touchpoints
- Capture in-the-moment reactions and feelings using text messages and camera phones
- Video diaries and blogs
- in situ narrations of experiences
- wireless webcams to record behaviour and experiences in a range of settings
Immersive research
Give participants and series of tasks to engage in and report on.
For longitudinal research you can build and sustain relationships.
Software platforms exist to not only capture but help you analyse and report all this information.
Key words: netnography, virtual home visits, in situ narration, immersive online research
3. Replicating focus groups in real time
The most recognisably traditional format, these take place in a 'group room' where people meet at an appointed time, and respondent in real time to questions set by a moderator - or two. Stimulus can be shown and there is often a whiteboard on which respondents can write or draw.
They can also upload their own images.
Most groups are still done using a typed chat format, which takes longer and favours good typists, but is more stable and easier to organise than using video. Some argue that the relative anonymity of chat helps encourage disclosure.
Best done using a platform (provides the software for invitations, the room, the whiteboard and instant transcripts, but can be done for free in any program that allows the formation of a closed group to chat live or enables multi-point video.
Virtual reality / virtual worlds Virtual reality aims to replicate the real word and study behaviour in it e.g. virtual supermarkets, while virtual worlds can be realistic or fantasy, or an uneasy mixture of both. Both quite complex to work with.
4. Asynchronous formats – questioning and responding by voice, text, image or video in participants’ own time
With Web 2.0 people can interact without physically being there at the same time, making it more convenient for them to participate and overcoming some of the limitations of instant chat formats. These formats are particularly good for longitudinal research, but can equally be used to get together a dispersed group of busy people to discuss a single issue or a whole range. Variations include:
BBFGs Bulletin board focus groups / forums
A moderator posts questions (by text, video or phone message) and participants respond on a private message board in their own time. The moderator can allow them to see and comment on others’ responses, as well as uploading stimulus material and asking respondents to upload photos/videos.
Blog groups – as above, but with a more modern feel and possibly encourage more reflective responses.
Private social networks – as above, but with a great variety of tools (widgets) that can be easily added e.g. a photo module, maps, blogs. Feel comfortably like MySpace or Facebook, can be very engaging, but anyone can make one at Ning or Webjam. Larger social networks are often described as communities.
Wikis To gather and evolve knowledge on a subject or develop concepts.
MEGs Moderated email groups
The moderator sends a series of emails to the group members, and can replay comments to the group, (or copy others in blind) but the members do not communicate directly with each other or know each others’ identities.
5. Specific online tools that replicate offline tasks
but can be done with dispersed groups on an interactive basis: make collages online, ‘mark up’ stimulus material with changes and annotations, concept building, thought bubbles, laddering, pre and post tasking, etc.
6. Getting qualitative information from larger communities
Unlike the ‘naturally occurring’ communities of net/webnography there are many communities specifically created for brand advocacy, customer relations management and ongoing research (MROCs – Market Research Online Communities).
They can last for months or years. Unlike panels, these have a social, interactive centre, allow/encourage members to start their own discussions, and are actively moderated, managing relationships and group dynamics – even with larger communities numbering 100’s or 1000’s. MROCs can be used quantitatively like panels, but also questions/tasks/issues can be posted daily, and will be discussed by smaller groups of people who find them most interesting or relevant, making them in effect a qualitative tool.
7. Creation and co-creation
All of the above methods make it easy to involve designers and clients in the research and creation process, although some brands set up websites that are specifically about asking consumers / designers/ specialists to share their ideas and knowledge.
Crowdsourcing / mass collaboration /crowd voting / crowd wisdom/ Wikinomics Crowdsourcing is tapping into the collective intelligence of a broad audience to complete tasks traditionally done by a single person or small group. Generally done using the Internet, Crowdsourcing is being used for a variety of tasks in marketing, product design, development and other areas. It is claimed that
- Solutions are found more quickly
- Solutions from ‘outsiders’ can be more apt
- The ‘crowd’ can predict more accurately than specialists or think tanks
A cross between the open source model of software and the Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki),Crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. Problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. Users—also known as the crowd—typically form into online communities, and the crowd submits solutions. The crowd also sorts through the solutions, finding the best ones. These best solutions are then owned by the entity that broadcast the problem in the first place—the crowdsourcer—and the winning individuals in the crowd are sometimes rewarded. P& G famously uses ‘open innovation’ with a range of partners for R&D. InnoCentive is a leading website where solution seekers can post their questions. Crowdsourcing is also used for Government planning (transit system for Salt lake City) and non-profit organisations.