Webinar | Technology Partners – Discussion with AYTM & QualSights

Free On-Demand Webinar – L&E Webinar Series

On March 18th, 2020, we hosted our first webinar of the year. In this on-demand webinar you will learn about the newest technology companies that L&E has partnered with to make your research process not just easier, but seamless from start to finish.

Our Research Design Engineer, Renee Wyckoff, hosted this panel discussion and in this webinar you will get a brief overview of the functionality of each tech tool:

  • Quantitative market research survey platform from tech partner, AYTM (Ask Your Target Market)
  • Qualitative insights platform from tech partner, QualSights
  • Hear about real use case scenarios from each tech partner and how it can apply to your projects – including how COVID-19 has effected the research industry and what you can do to keep your projects moving along!

Guest Speakers: 

Research on Research | New White Paper

White Paper Download

L&E’s journey to understanding our research participants

Is great qualitative research recruiting important to you? We hear from clients that great recruiting ranks pretty high, which means quite a bit to L&E since we are passionate about recruitment.

We are so passionate that our Research Design Engineer conducted research with our own research participant panel to learn more about what motivates and excites our participants. So we ask you again, is great qualitative research recruiting important to you? If so, download Renee’s white paper and learn about the research we’ve done to help deliver better recruitment solutions to you.

To continue reading, download the report, by clicking here (no form to fill out).

Is your qualitative research helpful or harmful? | New White Paper from L&E

White Paper Download

Is your qualitative research helpful or harmful?

Recent trends in the market research industry show that more and more researchers are looking to quantitative panels to complete qualitative research. The hope is that quant panels will reduce costs and save time, but are they actually faster and cheaper, and what is the quality of the data they generate?

With new research by Insight and Measurement’s David F. Harris and L&E’s Renee Wyckoff, and an in-depth interview with Procter & Gamble’s Tia Maurer, our paper proves that completing qual research without a specialized company poses a serious threat to data quality.

To continue reading, download our latest white paper, by clicking here (no form to fill out).

Webinar | Updates in Qualitative Research Technology

Free On-Demand L&E Webinar

On September 18th, 2019 we hosted our most popular webinar of the year. We are brought back our most popular webinar from 2018 and the topic of technology in qualitative research! Last year we discussed how technology is bringing researchers, stakeholders and brands closer than ever to their consumers. In this webinar we circled back with Charlie and Lenny to learn what’s on the horizon in the industry with key technology. This webinar is sure to be fun with this duo!

Guest Speakers: 

  • Charlie Rader, Digital Insights Designer at Procter & Gamble
  • Lenny Murphy, Executive Editor & Producer at GreenBook

Webinar | Who Cares about Data Quality?

FREE On-Demand L&E Webinar

On June 26th, 2019 we hosted our second webinar of the year focusing on the topic of data quality. Want to learn what the leaders in our industry are doing to get better data, and therefore, getting better insights? Do you want them to explain how they improved their data as a result of actual research they performed to understand consumer behavior and study flaws to deliver better research outcomes?

Guest Speakers: 

  • Tia Maurer, Group Scientist, Procter & Gamble
  • David F. Harris, author of, The Complete Guide to Writing Questionnaires: How to Get Better Information for Better Decisions
  • Renee Wyckoff, Research Design Engineer at L&E Research

Renee’s Takeaways – Get the scoop on L&E’s Tech Partners Webinar!

Webinar Summary

L&E Technology Partners – A Deeper Look at Qual Research Technology – Webinar held on February 20, 2019

As the first webinar in our 2019 series, we focused on bringing some of our valued technology partners to the forefront.  L&E has the opportunity to see the tremendous value that working with these partners brings to our qualitative work every day, so we wanted to share what we know hoping that spreading the word about what these partners can do, will add some value to your work as well!

This was a very charismatic panel, as you could tell that they were all very passionate about what they had to say!  We began by introducing Chad Reynolds, founder of Batterii.  Chad practically grew up in consumer research, as he had the influence of his mom who worked for P&G for over 30 years doing product research.  He spent a good part of his childhood testing all sorts of products from shampoo to potato chips! We’re all glad he survived, so that he could join us and tell us all about Batterii.  Next up, we had Dave Pataki, Executive Vice President of Focus Forward.  Dave had been with Focus Forward for over six years.  Prior to that, Dave spent many years in the CPG industry, helping come up with innovative ways to grow either a segment or a product line in ways that were not always top of mind.  Next, we had Colin Valdiserri, Co-Founder and CEO of Informed Decisions Group.  Colin’s background is in consumer psychology and multi-variant methods.  IDG was started about 15 years ago with the concentrating on generating non-traditional research methodologies, focusing more on behavioral analysis.  Then we moved on to the always delightful Allie Putterman of LivingLens.  Allie is the Business Development Director at LivingLens.  Allie’s background has always been in market research, working from the segmentation side of things to new product testing, and now, on the tech side of things.  Last but not least, we met Jared Nguyen, Manager of Research and Technology Services at Recollective.  Jared’s background has been in both marketing and technology as a whole, and he has always been interested in ways to interact with technology He’s really been enjoying watching online qualitative research space evolve in the past couple of years.

In this webinar, we focused on learning more about our valued tech partners, and the services they provide.

Let’s find out what they can do!

We started by asking our partners a little bit about what their company does, followed by a feature that their platform or service offers that their clients get excited about. 

  • Batterii started out as a tech platform, realizing that working in innovation and research projects, there were two really big needs. The needs were collecting insights from consumers, and getting at the really interesting and intimate moments in their lives, as well as pulling all of that information together in a space were researchers and stakeholders can collaborate on it. When missions are launched, people tend to get really excited about what they can do when different communities or different populations are built out. They get really excited about the types of questions they can ask, and then follow that with being able to capture intimate video moments that can be shared in presentations.
  • Focus Forward started in the transcription business in 2003. Transcription could be looked at then as a word document in different formats, edited and summarized from notes. What gets clients excited now is a new tool called Enhance. Enhance takes the transcript and syncs it up audio or video where you can actually use the transcript as more of an interactive tool.
  • IDG focuses on shopper insights. Clients get most excited about the life-sized virtual aisle. The life-sized virtual aisle offers clients an extremely high 4k resolution screen in which can be touch-interactive, where participants can shop, take products off the shelf, turn them around, and look at them. The biggest advantage is not being locked into certain markets, the virtual aisle is portable, and can be set up anywhere in the world.
  • LivingLens is the friendly tech company! They enable better, richer insight by turning video and other multimedia into stories, data, and insights. What gets clients really excited is the capture, analysis, and the storytelling capabilities that come out of that. The time that they can save working with multimedia content and the new types of data they can work with to gather insight from.
  • Recollective is an online mobile community platform optimized for desktop and mobile access. Projects can be small and personal such as a three-day engagement with 10 participants up to 5,000 participants for a year or longer across the globe in multiple languages. Clients get excited about a diverse set of tools available, such as quick on-boarding, participant tools, abilities to screen them, and presenting activities to them. In that socialized or private environment, you can moderate and pull data for analysis. At the drop of a hat, a researcher can quickly build their project within the Recollective environment with intuitive tools, different methodologies, etc., which ultimately helps save time with analysis.

Next, we asked our partners what they feel their platform or service lends that provides something truly unique or different to the way their clients do qualitative.

  • Batterii provides the ability to story-tell through an entire project in a very different way. Within the platform, you can create consumer-driven stories by being able to quickly jump through the walls of your room and show the actual videos we started with based on the consumer need. Here’s how the journey map was created around the pain points, here’s the 10 ideas that were created based off of that, then here’s the mission that was run where concept testing was done with different consumers, in a different market, who have the same need. Being able to tell the story all in one place has been the most powerful thing that separates Batterii from what is being done today.
  • Focus Forward is now using Enhanced transcription where transcripts can be synced up with video or audio, allowing clients a more interactive experience with the process and the ability to jump right to the key points. Where before, the only choice was for a client was to read through a lengthy document to get to the point of what was really going on in the research. With Enhanced, in a matter of minutes, they can get to key words, highlight clips, can pull those clips for presentation purposes.
  • IDG obviously can be used for the virtual aisles. Clients are also using in different ways such as creating menu boards for fast food restaurants. Rather than them having to mock-up menu boards, or make changes within the restaurant, they can use the virtual aisles for that, and make changes based off of their qualitative research. Another benefit is that eye-tracking can be added. Researchers can get a quick view as soon as the person is done virtually shopping to see what they noticed and didn’t notice.
  • LivingLens can help deliver greater efficiency when working with video. From the moment a video comes in, it is automatically transcribed, from there, you have the ability to search the spoken work, find exact moments of emotion, exact moments of when a product is mentioned, etc. This really speeds the analysis process. LivingLens also help researchers tell great stories through using video. Show reels can be easily created from the video content making sure that their insight is memorable and delivered with impact.
  • Recollective features an activity based engagement approach that offers a lot of flexibility in the way you design your research. You can easily use multiple methodologies, so whether it’s concept testing, shop alongs, or even a live chat session, all of the tools are there for you to review images, sort and rank, even engage with participants on the platform. The intuitive tools help you draw the entire community into content that you want them to see and interact with, and automation such as notifications and reminders help keep the process easy and running smoothly.

We then asked our partners what they may be able to find out using the data that comes from their platform or service, that they may not be able to using another platform or service.

  • Batterii can take very loose questions and refine them down into a set of different activities. Missions can be created, and also follow-on polls. Several missions could be running in 10 different cities at the same time where different themes are popping up, from that there is the ability to quickly create a new mission in order to dig in a little deeper. The content coming back such as video, photos, poll data, gives the team the ability to create sketches or concepts that could solve a problem.
  • Focus Forward, with the use of Enhanced transcripts, allows clients to get to the information that they need quickly and efficiently, so they may save time writing a report, or being able to use the content for a presentation, etc.
  • While IDG does not actually produce data, it is the type of display used to deal with generic discussions and then collect data from other sources. What comes out of the virtual aisle, really depends on what is built into it. Behavioral data actually can be collected as participants interact with the virtual aisle. Moderators can know how many times something was picked up, whether they looked at the back of it, whether they put it back on the shelf, versus putting it into their virtual basket.
  • LivingLens allows clients to use video across a variety of methodologies. Video provides additional layers of insight where you may be able to see someone’s environment, watch them interact with products, and most times, that is going to reveal more than they might not have thought to share with you.
  • Recollective puts care and effort into designing data and content format to allow for seamless analysis across all areas of the platform by allowing to capture response in a number of different data formats. By keeping all of that under one roof, you can interact with the content immediately, and literally moderate and do analysis without even leaving the page.

Piggy backing on the last question, we asked our partners what kinds of tools they offer to make analysis easier on their clients.

  • Batterii does image and video analysis, frame by frame. If you have to find logos, key words, objects, places, facial expressions, etc., it’s easy to quickly spot different themes and content.
  • LivingLens removes the manual burden that comes with working with video. They leverage AI learning to speed up the analysis process of the content. They can also remove any language barriers for interpreting content in any language.
  • Focus Forward, from a transcription standpoint, they are allowing clients to quickly get to where they need to go by taking human transcript and marrying it with audio and video at any given point in time.
  • Recollective provides everything from word clouds to photos and video walls along with dynamic charts in a dashboard streaming format. Also, multilingual automatic video transcription that feeds directly into text analytics and data discovery tools.
  • IDG’s biggest piece is the eye tracking they can provide in conjunction with the virtual aisle. Simply because moderators can talk about the different packages that are being tested, talk to the participants what they like and don’t like. Eye tracking helps convey information that a participant may not have been able to get across, such as what they noticed, what they didn’t.

For the last question, we asked our partners what they thought about AI and machine learning, and what impact they see them having on qualitative research.

  • Colin of IDG shared that from his perspective, there have already been some advancements in terms of visual recognition. Something that used to have to be done on a frame by frame basis, can now be done using visual recognition, delivering results more quickly.
  • Dave of Focus Forward shared that while AI has certainly made some advancements, it still has a way to go when it comes to transcription. Maybe ten years from now, but right now, nothing can replace the actual human transcript.
  • Chad of Batterii felt that we’re still in an infancy stage when it comes to AI machine learning for qual research. However, down the road it will help add a much more human element to the work we’re doing by giving us more time to actually spend with people. A lot of emotional benefits that we’re not seeing just yet, but it’s coming.
  • Allie of LivingLens shared that AI and machine learning are already driving a lot of the capabilities on their platform. An example would be by using object recognition during an ethnographic diary study, where a participant is shopping, we can pinpoint the exact moment that the shopper is at a certain place in the store. It really helps eliminate the need to watch through all of the content, or manually tag points. It’s still evolving, but it’s helping figure out how to work with qualitative research in a new way.
  • Jared of Recollective felt that leveraging AI is about bringing efficiencies to things, and that there are elements of qualitative research that can only be improved with AI. Recollective is always looking to find those efficiencies, whether it just being time saved.

We hope you found this summary to be helpful! If you didn’t register for this webinar you can listen to this webinar in its entirety, or download a free, transcribed version by clicking here.

Be on the lookout for our next webinar, which will be in June 2019. If you can’t wait until then, you can always view our on-demand webinars. Don’t forget to subscribe to our blog so you can keep up with what is happening at L&E!

Until June!

Your Research Design Engineer at L&E,

Renee Wyckoff

Think Outside the Box: Creative Ideas for Better Qualitative Research

Focus groups and other qualitative research techniques are often used to generate ideas for new product development. In spite of this frequent application, it is notoriously difficult to bring eight, ten or even twelve strangers together for a discussion. Add to that the need to get them to open up and “be creative” about your brand, messaging or products and services, and you have a real challenge.

Great recruiting and great moderating are two of the most critical elements for this process to work. Great recruiting brings you open, honest, articulate individuals who have imagination and a sense of play. Great moderators create an open and accepting environment where participants can say whatever is on their minds. Once you have those, you are halfway home.

The next critical element is to have some creative ways to get people talking. Here are some ideas to break the ice and get people thinking outside their comfort zone – and generating great ideas for you.

  • Change Your Perspective: Think about the user of your product and how they see the world when they are using it. Developing a dog product? Get participants on their hands and knees so they can experience the world from their dog’s point of view. Looking into baby products? Perhaps asking your participants to imagine sitting in their baby’s stroller or car seat would give them a new perspective. (Disney asks their merchandising managers to crawl through their stores on their hands and knees to get a kid’s perspective. If it works for Disney, it might work for you!).
  • Get Comfortable: The traditional focus group setup of respondents around the table, and the moderator at the head, may not be optimal for all groups. Try a living room setup to create a more casual and open environment. Alternatively, skip the facility all together and hold the focus group in a congenial bar or restaurant. If you’re researching tweens, how about holding your discussion at the food court in a local mall? Or how about discussing baby products at a baby shower? You may have some technical challenges, but letting people stay in their natural environment might get you richer insights.
  • Take Some Time: Most people need more than an hour and a half or two hours to feel comfortable with a group of people they have never met before. And, most people need more than that to immerse themselves in a topic enough to generate new and exciting ideas. Many researchers believe that longer focus groups (four to eight hours, with appropriate breaks) are better for generating creativity, especially in new product development.
  • Put on a Play: Role-playing around a situation can reveal many interesting insights about the customer’s experience. Ask participants to role-play explaining to a friend how they use your product – or explaining to their spouse why they chose your brand (even though it is more expensive than the competition). Be sure that everyone gets a chance to play roles on both sides of the discussion to get as many perspectives as you can.
  • Picture This: Many people relate better to pictures than words, so use pictures to generate ideas. You can produce pictures of different kinds of people (in different settings) and ask respondents whether the people in each picture would be your brand’s customers, and why. You can give participants a stack of magazines and ask them to create a collage of images that they associate with your brand or product. You can even ask them to draw pictures on flip charts or white boards, as long as you make it clear that artistic talent is not necessary.
  • Bring Props: When you recruit respondents, ask them to bring something with them to open the discussion. You might ask them to bring something that they associate with your brand. If you are working on children’s clothing, ask them to bring their favorite outfit so they can explain what makes it their favorite. If you are designing pet products, have them bring a picture of their pet(s). (Everyone loves to talk about their pets, and different breeds will need different toys, so it will help to understand everyone’s context.)

  • Get Sticky: Sticky notes and markers are great tools for generating discussion. You can ask respondents to brainstorm ideas, make lists (challenges, strengths and weaknesses, do’s and don’ts, etc.), hypothesize uses and many more. Then, once the ideas have been generated, you can stick them on a wall, a white board, a flip chart or another surface. Once they are posted, they can then be evaluated and prioritized by moving the sticky note around. You can even use different color sticky notes to denote different types of ideas or categories.
  • Throw A Party: When you need to differentiate similar products by exploring and defining their brand personalities, ask respondents to imagine that they are “going to a party at the ________ house.” For example, local hospitals are pretty similar in their benefits and features: they all have similar emergency rooms, x-rays and doctors. So how are they different? We asked participants to imagine the hospital was throwing a party at their house. We asked them to describe the party they imagined in detail (e.g., who was there, how they were dressed, what food was offered, how was it served, what music was playing). The resulting discussion revealed these three local hospitals were indeed very different in terms of their brand personas.
  • Flip Your Questions: Sometimes, we just need to think of things differently in order to loosen up great ideas. So instead of asking the usual questions (e.g., what kind of people would use this product?) flip it: What kind of people would definitely NOT use this product? Asking negatively based questions can easily lead participants to thinking about the opposite. And the more outrageous the question, the better. For example: “You’d have to be crazy to use this product to _________.” or “No one in their right mind would buy this product to _______________.” (Note: Fill-in-the-blank questions are good for generating interesting ideas once the group is warmed up and comfortable with each other.)
  • Orient Your Respondents: Two of the biggest hurdles for using focus groups to generate new ideas are respondent’s lack of comfort and familiarity with each other and with the specific idea-generating techniques being used (which can seem strange to the uninitiated). In order to overcome this obstacle, bring your group together twice. First, bring them together to get to know each other, to learn about the problem being addressed, and to become familiar with the creativity techniques you will be using. Then, convene the group again a few days later to conduct the focus group. In this way, you let your respondents overcome their shyness, and get them thinking about and looking forward to participating in the group.

Qualitative research is an excellent tool for generating innovative and creative marketing and new products and services. Using unique and creative question approaches and brainstorming activities can help even the most reserved respondent open up and share their deepest insights. Introducing an element of fun and “out of the box” thinking can increase the likelihood of generating innovative and exciting insights and ideas.

What other creative techniques have you used to get respondents to share their insights? Leave a comment below!

Webinar | L&E Technology Partners – A Deeper Look at Qual Research Technology

FREE on-demand L&E WEBINAR

On February 20th, 2019, we hosted our first webinar in our webinar series for 2019. We learned more about the technology companies that we have partnered with to make your research process not just easier, but seamless from start to finish. Our Research Design Engineer, Renee Wyckoff hosted this panel discussion and in this webinar you learn more about:

  • Cloud-based collaboration platform from tech partner, Batterii
  • Online Transcription Portal and Keyword Search from tech partner, Focus Forward
  • The Virtual Aisle from tech partner, Informed Decisions Group (IDG)
  • Video Analytics from tech partner, LivingLens
  • Online insights communities/online research platform from tech partner, Recollective

Guest Speakers: 

    • Chad Reynolds, Founder & CEO, Batterii
    • Kim Harrison, CEO, Focus Forward
    • Colin Valdiserri, Co-Founder & CEO, Informed Decisions Group
    • Allie Putterman, Business Development Director, LivingLens
    • Dana Cassady, Manager, Client Development, Recollective