Immersive research is a term for a range of research methods that capture customer experiences, behaviours and emotions, in context, and as they occur. It draws on ethnography, longitudinal studies and contextual enquiry.
Researchers will recognise offline self-reporting methods like diaries, tasking, photo and video recording, as well as observation methods like shadowing, and accompanied anything from showering ( I kid you not!) to stir fries.
Notably P&G has really taken the immersive approach to heart, launching 2 programs in
2002 called Living It and Working It for their employees. P&G employees lived, ate and shopped with consumers – in Working Itthey worked behind the counter of a small store.
P&G have also used online immersive research to see how real consumers use their products in the privacy of their own bathrooms. Qualvu sent participants a mobile camera and tripod stand to record their routines as much as modesty would allow.
The participants were asked to give a “tour” of their bathroom and to record their morning routine over a four-day period. They were also asked to answer a four-part series of questions. Participants logged on to the Qualvu Portal, received their questions via video from the researcher, and then simply took their mobile camera into their bathrooms. Qualvu compensated participants for this extraordinary openness, and for their time, by letting each participant keep the mobile camera.
Read the full case study here.
Immersive Research has thrived in the online environment, which provides just the right tools for capturing what some people now call ‘moments of truth’ – when consumers are interacting with products and services and reacting to messaging.
Fundamentally these tools include the mobile phone (especially a smartphone), a webcam ( especially a wireless webcam) and some sort of central space (often a bulletin board), where participants can reflect on their experiences, interact, develop ideas – and where researchers can analyse. Bulletin boards are particularly good for developing longer term relationships with respondents. Add to that screen tracking technology, tablets, headcams, pen cams, and the possibilites are endless. Benefits include:
- presenting the world from the participants point of view – they choose how to capture and express the experience via images, video, words, even emoticons
- removing the observer effect and the requirement to present the self in a particular way – although not entirely*
- Making remembered events much more reliable and easy to re-access
- longitudinal interaction with participants over several assignments, leading to knowledge of the sort that even the best group discussions could not provide.
Mobile and Ethnography are the buzzwords of the moment, but Auto Ethno may not be the answer you think it is.
“Revelation Mobile empowers researchers with unfiltered access to subjects in their natural contexts, wherever they are”.
“But Qualvu’s real breakthrough is online ethnographic videos that deliver richness, accuracy and truth that rivals and exceeds traditional methods.”
Asking respondents to take photos and videos of themselves IS NOT THE SAME THING as consistent long term ethnographic observation of the Everyday Lives variety. Yes, if there is an observer or a cameraman present there is an initial observer effect – but that observer can decide what is significant, can observe things the participants themselves aren’t even aware of – and there is less chance of ‘performance’ because the participants don’t know the objectives of the study.
Whereas if you are engaging participants in immersive research where they use their mobile or a webcam
- You will have to give them some sense of the objectives and boundaries of the study – at least whether its about snacking, or washing
- You may need to get them to focus on particular types of interactions to avoid wading through hours of posts, so they will have a sense of what you need to know. They are likely to want to be helpful.
- They get to choose which aspects of their life they show you. Yes, they are candid, but there is also plenty of scope for posturing and self-presentation in what they choose to post.
- Mobile phone cams in particular are not very good at showing the whole process of what the respondent is doing in context. You see the respondent’s eye view, but unless there is some sort of stand for the camera, some of the process and context are lost. So participants can show you the contents of their fridge, but its harder to capture the process of going up to the fridge, opening the door, deciding what to eat and preparing it.
As is the case with many forms of online, types of research blur into each other. Research using blogs mixed with projective exercises has been labeled immersive. Curiosity Inc use the Revelation Global platform to do what they call BRR – Blended Reality Research:
BRR weaves together digital learning platforms and tools with context-based discovery, collaboration and co-creation in physical environments. When we are designing a Blended Reality Research project, we ask ourselves 2 key questions:
1. What can we get participants to do for us and report back on digitally? 2. What would we like to do with them in context” (Karen Ward)
A different approach is taken by EthOs, which is a phone app for iPhone, Android and Blackberry phones that turns participants into ‘researchers’. They are given a number of ‘themes’ and asked to capture events that explore those themes – photo, video, audio,text – and they can even add tags. The ‘researchers’ upload their events to a website where there are flexible workspaces that allow further coding, noting, sorting and analysis. It is possible to involve the original participant researchers in this process if desired.
You can see the app in action here. The following is an excerpt from a report on EthOs that can be seen in full here:
Overall we feel it was very successful and is able to create exciting new insights for brands. It is a unique methodology that covers both qualitative and ethnographic styles of research.
This methodology has a number of potential applications:
• Identify different beliefs and motivations towards a category
• Gain insight around routines and rituals
• Build hypothesis for segment creation
• Provide colour and context for existing segments
• Uncover role of family dynamics
• Understand difference between expressed belief and actual behaviour
Three little snippets from the British Psychological Society Research Digest that add to the rationale for immersive research:
1. How walking through a doorway increases forgetting Whether in virtual reality or real reality, participants in the experiments forgot more when they walked through a doorway into another space. The theory is that there is a boundary effect to memory episodes – so you want to catch the moment before the person moves on.
2. Wine tastes like the music you are listening to Powerful and heavy? Subtle and refined? Zingy and refreshing? The same wines taste different according to the music that is playing. This study shows the influence of context, although it has some methodological loopholes. It would be interesting to hear if there is any other similar research?
3. People don’t follow their own directions when walking from A to B. Asked to describe the shortest possible route between two city locations, and then asked to walk the shortest possible route between those same two points, not a single participant followed the path they’d actually described. People have different mental strategies for planning routes, and the ones they plan in advance, or give to a stranger, are not the same as the one they actually take. The results “highlight the importance of visual feedback from the environment for route planning. ” and again emphasises the importance of seeing what people do – not what they say they will do.
