At Dub, we help our global clients (brands and agencies) create private, invite-only online communities for the purpose of delivering game-changing insights, collaborative innovation and co-creation. This means helping bring together a brand and its customers, but also those who aren't yet consuming their products or services, or those that actively don't want to. These are often referred to as outliers or abstainers, and they are the people who can deliver the best ideas and the richest insights.

The insight communities we help create can be categorised as either Project-based or Longitudinal.

1. Project-based Insight Communities

As the name suggests, these communities are short-lived; typically a couple of days up to a a few weeks. They are tasked to meet a single project objective (research, insight or co-creation) and once this has been achieved, they are quickly disbanded.

Being focused on a single objective means that activity is over a shorter period but is likely to be intensive. Members of the community are likely be assigned exercises on a daily basis, and these can range from blogging, keeping diaries, roleplaying, group discussions, surveys and polls, and brainstorms. Unlike traditional research techniques, members have a much clearer idea as to what is happening with the information and ideas they share since the asynchronous nature of the engagement affords the Community Manager / Moderator the time to feedback. This in itself motivates participation.

In support of project-based insight communities, Dub has the leading platform called IdeaStream

2. Longitudinal Insight Communities

Brands like the opportunity longitudinal insight communities afford, since it's like getting a large number of their most valued customers together in a room and making them available to answer any questions anyone in the organisation has at any time, 24/7.

Because of the longer-term nature of these communities, different tactics and resources need to be deployed to keep them alive and active. This includes going behind just the task-based level of interaction seen in the project-based communities, and allowing members to go off-piste and start their own discussions. The community (and insight) will also benefit from letting members strike-up their own relationships, as it allows the brand to witness their customers talking about their products and services in the most natural, unfacilitated fashion.

To help you deliver successful longitudinal insight communities, Dub has developed the UpClose platform.

In addition to providing the best technology, Dub has a wealth of experience in how to find the right people for your community, how to engage and optimise your time with them, and how to ensure your members are motivated and rewarded over time. Dub can help you plan how long your community should be and give you guidance on how to deliver design effective online research.

To find out more about how Dub can help you fire-up your insight communities, make better decisions and be more innovative, contact stephen@dubstudios.com

As MROCs (or insight communities) continue to gather pace and mature as a methodology, so to does the way in which they are measured and the techniques used to manage them.

We've long been touting the benefits of small but focused communities where membership numbers are no more than 300. That's not to say you can't invite more people, but the quality of the participation and output will fall as you go much beyond these numbers, as will the time and cost of managing the community and analysing the output.

While there are still researchers and research departments that use the language of 'completes' when referring to the success of their insight community, we always push back and talk to them about 'engagement' and how you can get much greater value from a smaller number of participants, both in terms of their overall participation with the tasks and exercises but also their average number of contributions.

This metric becomes even more prevalent when you start to consider moving your insight community into a phase of co-creation where you are looking to collaborate with the leading 1% of your customer base.

Another reason why your community needs to be smaller in size and more focused is that consumers are now members of more networks and groups than ever before. To cut through the white noise is thus increasingly difficult, and puts more emphasis in the design of engaging, creative research and the need to make the intrinsic motivational factors (membership, connectivity etc) work even harder.

To find out more about how Dub can help you engage the top 1% of your customer base and build thriving communities for insight, innovation and cocreation, contact Stephen Cribbett on +44 (0) 20 7247 3327

We've built and facilitated over a hundred online communities purposed with delivering fresh insight, eureka moments and relationships, and we're constantly impressed by the energy, enthusiasm and creativity extolled by consumers. Not only does the convenience of these methods facilitate better results (than traditional research techniques), it brings out the creative best in people since the rewards and value is a combination of the emotional, social, physical and financial.

We talk to our clients about the merits of 'narrative journeys'; the creation of a beginning, a middle and an end to the story that results in co-created value. Give consumers room to manoeuvre and a multitude of ways in which they can express themselves, and combine this with the ability to continually iterate the exercises and you've got a melting pot of insight and ideas.

The most successful insight and co-creation communities are those that are led by skilled Community Managers - a new breed of research moderators. Community Managers are story tellers, conversationalists and relationship brokers, and they display bags of passion in order to inject enthusiasm and energy into the community. It's a fun and interesting role that many researchers new to the discipline and quickly falling in love with as they really get to 'know' their community as people they are and not just as 'respondents'.

One strategic intent of your insight and co-creation community should be to fish out the top 1%. These can be your leading advocates, the most creative, the most digitally connected etc. Finding them is critical, and this is where we move from research into co-creation. We must drop the argument about bias and representation and look further forward. As researchers we need to be part of the creation process as well as helping clients understand what went before.

Create the right environment within your community and the ideas and insights will flow, rapidly! Build relationships and your community will be engaged and motivated to co-develop new ideas without the need to financially motivate them. Listen carefully, talk clearly and remain open, honest and transparent and you'll do well. Goodbye focus groups, hello future. It's a brave new world we are entering into as researchers, but the future looks bright. Our skills and craft are not lost, they are developing and increasing in relevance.

It’s a given that within online qualitative research (blogs, video diaries, forums, chat, etc), researchers get the opportunity to hear consumers talk about their experiences and their feelings towards products brands and services, but is the dialogue ‘real’ enough?

John Suler’s 'The Psychology of Cyberspace' says:

"It's well known that people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn't ordinarily say or do in the face-to-face world. They loosen up, feel more uninhibited, express themselves more openly. Researchers call this the "disinhibition effect."

Perhaps the pinnacle of any online research community or ad-hoc online qual study, however, is when, as a researcher, you get to sit back and hear consumers talk among themselves about brands, products and their experiences.

Why is this so powerful? Simply, it provides some of the most candid and unadulterated insight one will ever experience since, as far as the participant is concerned, neither the researcher nor the client (brand) is in the same room and, as John Suller says:

“According to traditional Internet philosophy, everyone is an equal: Peers share ideas and resources. In fact, the net itself is engineered with no centralized control. As it grows, with a seemingly endless potential for creating new environments, many people see themselves as independent-minded explorers. This atmosphere and philosophy contribute to the minimizing of authority.”

These phenomenon and the platforms set a scenario where consumers can literally spew the good, the bad and the ugly without fear of reprisal, backlash or judgment and without the peer pressure associated with real physical presence. For the researcher and the client, it provides an opportunity to hear first-hand the language and experience the passion and gusto consumers use to share their points of view. It delivers truths that are hard to come by elsewhere, in such fashion.

If you’re asking yourself what online research communities can do for you, this should be somewhere near the top of the list.

I had the honour of spending three days with some of the market research industry's leading brains recently in Malta, at Merlien Institute's Qualitative Consumer Research & Insights 2011 conference. Among those attending were MR legend Ray Poynter, Di Tunney of Live Insights, Frank Geers of InSites, Jochum Stienstra from Ferro Explore! and Will Goodhand, Juicy Evangelist from BrainJuicer.

You can see a selection of the presentation here for yourself, and in particular I'd draw your attention to a fantastic presentation and discussion lead by Aaron Reid of Sentient Decision which centred on 'free will' and the science of neuroscience, an area that is clearly becoming much lauded within MR circles.

My presentation is also here for you to see in glorious technicolour (below). As you will see, I challenged the role and approach of MR agencies as the onslaught of social media led methodologies continues to encroach on old-world techniques. Tell me what you think, join the debate....
Research communities an agency proposition or brand asset

I had the absolute pleasure of hosting an event in Sydney last night alongside Mike Beder, one of Australia's leading research recruitment specialists and Chair of the AMSRS. The event titled 'In Search of the Online Research Nirvana' was attended by around 20 of Sydney's leading market researchers from companies including Added Value, Shift, AMR, Zebra and The Leading Edge, to name a few.

Some great questions from a very informed audience, and even better, an opportunity to share a drink with some of the nicest people in the business.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the warm welcome and for coming to the event, and for making my time her in Sydney such a pleasure as always. Next stop, Melbourne for the ESOMAR conference.

This post continues our series on how the tools offered by our online research community platform, IdeaStream, combined with engaging research methodologies delivers more creative online research. In this article, I'm going to focus on IdeaStream’s Discussion Group tool which is used to support Bulletin Board Focus Groups.

Overview

Discussion Groups are inherently social. They are akin to web-based forums that most of us have had some form of involvement and interaction with. They are focused on delivering insightful ‘conversations’, both between moderators and participants, and among participants in an unforced, more natural way.

When and Where

At the end of last year, we detailed IdeaStream’s powerful blog tool. We explained that research blogs are owned and managed by the participant during the course of the study. Discussion Groups differ in that the Researcher (Community Manager or Moderator) hosts and manages the discussion, with participants invited to take part. As such, the Discussion Group tool is best used when you want to capture collective expression and opinions from participants. They can also be used when you want to observe conversations taking place between participants without prompting - a form of conversation that is often the richest and most natural, and thus the most insightful.

Typically, Discussion Groups require less involvement from participants than tasks designed using the blog tool, and are usually text-based (though there is the option to add multimedia in IdeaStream). This means researchers can publish more discussions within the same period, thus covering more topics.

Discussion Groups have a variety of uses. Here are a few examples:

1. Hints & Tips

The idea is simple - create a Discussion Groups whereby participants are asked to share hints and tips on a specific life experience or subject, with an active encouragement to gain advice from others and provide help and assistance to others.

The approach offers participants insights into others experiences. The Discussion Group will engender exciting new relationships among participants that can subsequently be built on in subsequent tasks. ‘Hints & Tips’ discussions can ne allowed to run and run, and gain momentum from various participants enthusiasm and passion for helping others.

Hints & Tips tasks play on personal knowledge and the desire to share. As such, they are great at igniting relationships and strengthening ties among your community. With this in mind, we recommend launching this type of task nearer the start of a community.

2. Get it off your chest

Using the Discussion Group tool, participants are asked to share something that irritates, frustrates or angers them (in connection with the area of investigation) with the group. It then asks them to suggest how they themselves would resolve the issue. This methodology works in the following ways:

• It harnesses the participants negative energy and channels it into a pro-active thinking and problem solving exercise.
• Participants can see the thoughts and resolutions of others - allowing them to collectively build solutions
• By sharing their experiences with others in the community, participants experience a catharsis, enabling them to move on to future tasks and concentrate on the positive aspects of the area of investigation

3. Debate this

This idea behind this task is to pose a potentially contentious issue and get participants who are likely to posses different viewpoints to discuss it. As you would expect in a real world setting, when differing views are aired, string thoughts, feelings and opinions can emerge. In effect, it allows researchers to observe where the ‘flash points’ of a given area of investigation are.

Key features of Discussion Groups

Here are some of the main features available within Discussion Group tasks, all of which have been developed with a focus on gathering 'quality' research content from participants:

Biased / un-biased discussions
When building your task using the Discussion Group tool, you have the option to create a ‘biased’ or ‘un-biased’ discussion. Biased discussions allow the participants to see what others have posted before they submit their own post. Un-biased discussions result in the participant having to submit their response before they can enjoy what others have said.

Unbiased discussions are used more-often as it’s been proven that participants are more likely to mirror what others have said on presentation of the conversation.

Auto-prompting
A feature available across all of IdeaStream’s asynchronous tools, auto-prompt sends out alerts to participants that have not responded to the task after a pre-defined period of time.

Social settings
Again, common to all IdeaStream tools, when the Community Manager builds the task they have the option to select its social settings. Social settings controls who within the community can see the content generated by that task, and subsequently who they can interact with as they debate the issue.

Picture upload
Participants can posts images to a Discussion Group at any time. This creates more colourful, richer response.

Emoticons
Emoticons, used within forums for many years, allow participants to express their feelings using a range of characteristic faces and icons. This tool is particularly useful in Asian territories where emoticons are used extensively in web-based communication.

Dub has added a further three languages - Dutch, Czech and Cantonese - to those available in it's best-in-class online qual research platform, IdeaStream. This brings the total number of languages supported by IdeaStream to 15. These include:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Dutch
• Polish
• Czech
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Italian
• Russian
• Mandarin
• Chinese
• Japanese
• Bahasa Indonesian
• Taiwanese

So if you're thinking of running an multi-market study or want to reach out to consumers, experts and staff in far-away places, IdeaStream will provide for all your online qual needs, including blogs, bulletin boards, surveys, brainstorms and live focus groups.

Stephen Cribbett, CEO, commented, 'we are seeing a continued uplift in international research work. This has created a huge uplift in the need for not only for our leading-edge research software but also for our in-market online moderators and researchers. As we continue to build our team and capabilities, we're helping our clients deliver success, who include TNS, Ipsos, Added Value and Flamingo among others. They're really enjoying the benefit of running seamless projects around the world, direct from their desktop'

When we talk to our clients and describe what we do and how we do it, the term social software often comes into the conversation to describe the nature of our online qual research and research community platform. Of late, it’s become clear that there are those of you unfamiliar with this term however, so it feels about time we demystified it and hit home just how powerful and future-focused social software is.

To start with a quote, Tom Coates, a blogger and Yahoo! employee, defined that: “Social software can be loosely defined as software which supports, extends, or derives added value from human social behaviour—message boards, music taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking.” More specifically, we define social software as having the following characteristics:

1. It allows users (people) to create, communicate, collaborate, share and learn
2. It can be syndicated, shared, reused or remixed, or it facilitates syndication
3. It has a web-interface (including mobile)

It’s fair to say that the majority of social software used today (and still developing) such as SocialText, Yammer, and Huddle have been created within the last ten years. The current adoption explosion can be put down to the continued growth of social networks (for both business and personal use) and the onslaught of the mobile web.

Perhaps one of the most exciting outcomes of social software has been the emergence of ‘social business’; businesses that harnesses social software to develop more open and transparent business culture. This includes both internal communication, collaboration and knowledge management as much as it does how organisations engage their customers/consumers, the latter including such new business disciplines as Social CRM, Online Brand Communities etc.

There is of course a much deeper explanation of social software, and a more technical one, but for the purpose of this discussion I’ll leave it at this. You should now understand that the work of Dub is to use social software to connect brands and organisations with consumers, customers, clients, suppliers and stakeholders, for the purpose of being more insightful and enhancing innovation capabilities.

Being More Insightful
Social software allows conversations (natural and facilitated) to occur over time. Conversations can be distributed, and include multimedia, using blogs, or group discussions can be engendered within forums. Of course, there are many other forms of discreet conversations taking place within, for example, shopper reviews and ratings, and status updates, but what’s important is that by listening carefully to the conversations and analysing meaning, your brand or organisation can be more knowing, more insightful and closer to the people that matter the most - those buying your product or service. With some smart people performing this analysis, you’ll be in a position to use the insight and information gleaned to make better decisions at every level.

As a brand or business, you have the choice to listen to the conversation, whether it’s taking place in an environment of your control (brand community) or out there on the blogosphere. The former requires the requires the creation and management of the community in the first instance, while the latter involves new skills (data mining, analysis) and tools (social media monitoring).

As well as listening to the conversation, you also can join in the conversation, though beware, there are many risks associated with this, and new breed of person (the Community Manager) required to get involved. People don’t appreciate brands bundling into the conversations they are having within their own personal networks and communities such as those hosted on Facebook, so over the years new, more innovative ways of entering the arena have emerged. One such example is social gaming, which see brands creating fun, engaging games that engender a level of competition and motivate the user to share their views with the brand and involve others within their network.

Social software, while facilitating these conversation, really only delivers the data, it can’t yet replace the role of the research analyst in uncovering valuable insights that can benefit the decision-making process. This is where Dub comes in, as experts in both how to conduct the conversation within a private online community, and how to analyse the data gathered to give it meaning, purpose and actionable status.

Enhancing Innovation Capabilities
Returning to the first of the characteristic sets at the top of this post, social software facilitates collaboration and group-thinking. When brands create collaborative environments populated by their people and those outside the organisation, and design innovation challenges (engineering, scientific, creative etc), the result is shared value in a new product and services that has been co-created. The size and magnitude of this new ‘workforce’ - inherently much larger that an organisations internal departments - provides for greater, quicker innovation. Ideas are literally sourced from the crowd outside of the business, hence the term crowd-sourcing that has emerged in recent years.

At Dub we talk about the work we do in supporting collaborative innovation. Our software facilitates group working, tasking, sharing and and dynamics of we-thinking. But importantly, we work with our clients to help them manage the stream of insight and ideas. We call this idea management, and it sees ideas generated externally internalised, and turned into a series of innovation challenges that the workplace community can then tackle appropriately. With internal social behaviours adopted, these innovation challenges are tackled much more efficiently within the organisation. For example, it recognises that talent lurks within all departments of an organisation, and that by providing a level playing field rid of glass ceilings, innovation challenges can be tackled by people across the business, not just those in an aligned department or silo.

So hopefully you can see how potent social software is as a facilitator for enhanced insight and innovation. Social software lets information and insight flow more freely, it connects people to the challenges that matter, and it creates collaborative network connections that you didn’t even know existed previously, all of which make for better, more open and transparent business that values the individual as much as it does the bottom line.

To find our how social software can help you build an open, social business, contact Stephen Cribbett, stephen@dubstudios.com / +44 (0) 20 72473327

Online qualitative research is maturing fast, and there's a huge range of live and asynchronous tools on the market for researcher to use, including our own best-in-class asynchronous application, IdeaStream. But we're not posting this to discuss the merits of our own tools and apps, we want to learn more from you, researcher, as to what you like and dislike about the 'live' focus group tools you've used. What works, what doesn't, what are their limitations, what would you change or add given the chance. All these questions and more...

We're compiling some research into what you want from your live focus group tools. Share your views and opinions, and learn from experience of others. We'll be compiling a report of the findings and sharing them with valid contributors here at a later date, thus helping you can make informed decisions.

To join the debate, simply answer the questions below as comments to this post.

Q1: If you could design your ultimate live focus group tool, what would be the top three features you'd include?

Q2: Considering your experience of live focus group tools, what have been the least useful features, the ones you could live without?

Q3: What features do you get most excited about, only to find out they don't do what you expected of them?

Q4: What's the most common technical problem experienced by respondents during the live focus groups you've run to-date?

Q5: What features are most useful when analysing the data gathered?