Archive for the ‘Research Tech’ Category

Press Release:  London/Los Angeles - 27th June 2011

Dub appointed online qual technology partner to Decision Analyst following extensive review online qual technology partner to Decision Analyst following extensive review.

Dub, the leading provider of online research software and services, today announced a new partnership with Decision Analyst, a global marketing research and analytical consulting firm. The agreement sees Dub provide online qual technology for the coming year and provides new innovation opportunities for both companies.

A vastly experienced team of online qual researchers, Decision Analyst conducted a lengthy review of research technology partners and selected Dub having had extensive hands-on experience.

Stephen Cribbett, Dub co-Founder and CEO, comments ‘We are delighted to have been selected by Decision Analyst to support their global online qual research work. We share many beliefs on where online qual is going and our tools have a good fit with their team of experienced online researchers’

”Dub’s advanced technology and capabilities enhance Decision Analyst’s qualitative research and ideation services.  The services we perform for our clients demand the highest quality, flexibility, security, and integrity. Dub is a major contributor in helping Decision Analyst achieve those goals,” according to Gwen Ishmael, Senior Vice President.

Dub and Decision Analyst’s partnership comes soon after the announcement of Dub’s expansion into the U.S. market, with a new office in LA.

To find out more, contact Stephen Cribbett, +44 (0) 20 7247 3327 or email stephen(at)dubstudios(dot)com

Just in, some great new feedback from a brand new client based in Australia that we had to share with you. You'll understand why when you read it....

I have used many (qual research software solutions) before... I would say IdeaStream is much better. The dashboard is far superior than what I've seen with other providers. It's also very intuitive.

To find out more about just how good our dashboard is, and other things, contact Stephen Cribbett on +44 20 7247 3327 or Kerry Hecht (US) on +1 310 997 5779

Vi är mycket glada att meddela att IdeaStream finns nu på svenska

For the rest of us, that means Dub are pleased to announce that IdeaStream is now available in Swedish, to compliment 17 other langauges including...

1. English
2. French
3. Dutch
4. Czech
5. Italian
6. Spanish
7. French
8. German
9. Portugeuse
10. Polish
11. Mandarin
12. Cantonese
13. Russian
14. Korean
15. Indonesian
16. Taiwanese
17. Japanese

If you can't see your chosen language on the list, and want to run an online research community, get in touch and we can deliver your language within just one week!

Here at Dub we see video being used to capture the thoughts, ideas and emotions of consumers so much more than it was even just three years ago. This is largely due to quicker and more stable broadband and the increase in integrated webcam technology making it more accessible. But perhaps most importantly, user-behaviours have matured to the point where creating and sharing video clips is a more widely accepted method of online communication. Users of all ages are now less comfortable in putting themselves in front of a camera, where once they would shy away and leave it to only the most brave and adventurous.

Within online research communities using our IdeaStream platform, we are also seeing more researchers and Community Managers using video (webcams) to introduce tasks and exercises. It provides some fantastic results as it has the effect of leading the horse to water and encouraging your members to use video themselves as the preferred response method. But there’s more to it than that. Here’s why we think it is such a valuable technique:

• We’ve said it already, but in using video to announce your tasks and exercises, you’re more likely to see your community members use video to respond. By demonstrating to them that you are in fact human, not robot, you increase the likelihood of them sharing their own ‘human’ lives and behaviours with you.
• It imbues your tasks and exercises with more personality and character, and makes it more engaging, than, say, a task introduced by text alone
• Video methods work particularly when engaging youth audiences - one of the largest video user groups
• Video-based response allows the researcher to interpret the emotions and decode behaviour in a more potent way than, say, text base response.
• Video recording is now available on an ever-increasing number of mobile phones and smart phones, making it a more convenient for consumers to capture video when ‘out and about’. (video accounts for approximately 70% of all mobile data traffic)

Our prediction is that text-based bulletin boards, like surveys, will soon become the ‘walking dead’. They offer limited response methods and are not as native to consumers as other methods. At Dub we always strive to help researchers deliver better, more creative research. This means harnessing the ways in which consumers are interacting with their friends and family everyday and re-appropriating it.  So researchers, it’s time to stop thinking and acting like you are removed from your participants, and start using the tools and channels that they themselves are using in the most natural of ways.

If you’re interested to know how Dub can help you execute creative online research with the smarted tools, contact Stephen Cribbett at stephen@dubstudios.com

We were very pleased with ourselves and feeling proud when we received this testimonial from one of our Australian clients in our inbox today. I think you'll see why when you read it...

It’s a combination of simplicity and sophistication that makes IdeaStream from Dub one of the best market research software packages that we’ve used.

Simplicity is for the participants – the ease of registration, the ability to customise the design of the platform and the user friendly interface means it’s easy to quickly establish a relationship with the people you need to engage with and ensure they are comfortable with your objectives and needs.

The sophistication is the back end and the research expertise that has so clearly gone into the design of the product.  From project management to reporting, IdeaStream allows researchers and their clients to have access to a powerful live platform.

Our company has evaluated and used competitor offerings and IdeaStream is by far, superior in all aspects.

If you'd like to find out what makes online qual tick and have the same experience as our friends around the world, contact Stephen Cribbett on +44 (0) 20 7247 3327 or email us@dubstudios.com

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.

Clients can be strange creatures at the best of times, not least when they ask for login details to see what’s going on in real-time within their online research community or bulletin board, but then never actually turn up! We’ve been asking the question ‘why is this happening?’, and have come up with some answers that may help overcome the apparent lack of engagement.

We believe that clients fail to logon as often as hoped for, for one of the following reasons:

1. They are incredibly time-poor
2. It’s not high on their priority list
3. They are asking for login details simply to tick a box, but never intend to logon in the first place
4. They are afraid of the technology and don’t get the right training and support
5. There’s so much data for them to observe and interact with that is scares them off

At Dub, we believe that online qual can deliver a new level of client engagement with the research if handled correctly. We’ve made steps towards supporting this, and have developed a new product that, when deployed alongside other techniques, will get them more engaged and, in turn, more insightful.

To begin with, here are some top tips - things you can do to get them more engaged:

1. Brief them thoroughly on the approach you are taking, the nature of the study design, and what the output will look like.
2. Schedule time to involve them in training on how to use the software, as without it they’ll feel alienated and afraid (your software vendor should be able to provide this support)
3. Keep the client training light - they don’t need to know how to do everything, just to observe and review the output
4. Send them regular digest reports - by email, telephone or whatever the most appropriate method - and include the most colourful, rich conversations and discussions posted
5. Give clients the opportunity to co-design a task or two towards the end of the project, thus  retaining their level of engagement throughout the project

Dissecting the points highlighted above, you’ll spot the need for some smart tools (technology / social software) to help deliver some of these methods. At voila, Dub has derived a number of new tools that can provide the client with a curated view of the latest and the most valuable conversations taking place. Despite not yet having a name (please feel free to make suggestions), the product provides an easily navigable web-based interface that removes many of the controls required to ‘run’ the project on IdeaStream (our online qual software). This clearly makes the interface more efficient and easier for the client to use. It can be customised and also allows the client to enter into conversation with the researcher via a commenting tool as well as being able to quickly share content with colleagues. Content presented to the client is easily curated by the researcher via IdeaStream.

A second new web-based product that Dub are developing is a Project Insight Management & Collaboration platform that allows the research project team (clients, researchers and other stakeholders) to seamlessly share information, collaborate and build ideas online, without the need to be ‘in the room’ or ‘on the phone’. It will run independently of IdeaStream, and will be licensed on a project-by-project basis. If you’re interested to learn more about either of these products, please contact Stephen Cribbett.

Stephen Cribbett
stephen@dubstudios.com
+44 (0) 20 7247 3327 /
m. +44 (0) 7973 663867

We're extremely proud of all of the online research technology that we've developed over the years. It facilitates a more creative online research experience for both respondent and researcher. One of the most effective and much heralded tools that we've integrated, however, is also the simplest and easiest to use (hence our pride in it!). It's called Notes. The simplest way to describe it is like Delicious for researchers.

Notes, allows researchers and admins to annotate, share and discover respondent-generated content. As an online research project progresses, researchers and admins can add notes to the most valuable content they see, so they can return to and/or share their thoughts and ideas with others, with ease.

Researchers and admins also create meta-databases with Notes. These generate tag clouds that help uncover trending topics. Researchers can also add notes-to-self, helping to remind them about the best content they have seen.

Our clients tell us that they love Notes, not just because of its ease-of-use, but because it saves them time at the end of projects when they need to review the content for analysis. Online research (including communities, MROCs) can produce a vast amount of data, so it's important to create mechanisms that allow researchers to organise, search and filter content. Notes fulfils this and more by removing the need for your project's Senior Analyst having to sequentially review all the data shared.

If you'd like to know more about how Notes can improve your online research, contact Stephen Cribbett, stephen@dubstudios.com

This week saw Dub launch two great new tools for qualitative researchers, namely bulletin board focus groups (BBFGs) and online market research communities (MROCs) solutions.

IdeaStream is our new online research community platform that combines  live, asynchronous and qual / quant market research tools. IdeaStream is designed to support communities of several hundred members anywhere in the world and has multi-lingual capability. IdeaStream has a range of task-based tools alongside those of a more open nature. Moderators and Community Managers (CMs) also benefit from the integration of our powerful moderation tool, Notes, which alows Moderators and CMs to collaborate more effectively on projects, manage community members within a single environment and share insight with clients and colleagues at the push of a button.

You can download an IdeaStream product sheet here, and request a demo here.

Knowing how much researchers love bulletin board focus groups (BBFGs), we've also released a new multimedia BBFG solution, aptly named BulletinBoard. It's been designed by researchers for researchers, and comes with all the features you'd expect such as text-based responses and moderation tools for deeper interrogation. It also offers some unexpected and powerful new features including multimedia sharing (pictures and video) and integrated polls and surveys. BulletinBoard also benefits from use of our Notes tool, so moderators can work collaboratively and document their thoughts and rate posts over time. This removes the need to scan everything again sequentially come the end of your project, and saves you valuable time, effort and, of course, money!

Get a copy of the BulletinBoard product sheet here, and you can also request a demo here.

If you'd like to find out more about IdeaStream and BulletinBoard, including standard rates,  then please contact Stephen Cribbett. In the meantime, you can register your interest and keep up-to-date with our news and new releases, including the soon to be released qual research-oriented journal and blogging solution, by entering your details on our homepage.

Added Value - part of the WPP marketing services group of companies - is the world’s leading brand development and marketing insight company with some 25 offices worldwide and a global client list that spans all categories.

 Dub have been working with Added Value for over three years, developing and enhancing a leading-edge digital insight and innovation tool that helps them to source the latest ideas, insights and opinions from consumers and experts around the world, without the need to bring together contributors - an activity that can prove costly and inefficient.  By both providing the social software and helping the client with some of the finer points of building and managing online communities, Dub has helped Added Value win more pitches, delivered more creative multimedia insight, and cemented its positioning as one of the leading industry innovators.

The platform, designed to support Added Value’s work - known as AV-id - makes use of micro-blogging, IM, forums, bulletin boards and media-sharing technologies, and harnesses the latest social networking behaviours to support live and ongoing dialogue among leading-edge consumers and experts from around the world. Added Value consultants are empowered with a unique moderation toolkit that allows them to interact directly with the community whilst sharing their thoughts and ideas with other members of the project team in both local and remote offices.

Driving actionable insight

By assigning members of the niche online communities structured tasks and activities, (of both a qualitative and quantitative nature), a stream of rich, multimedia insight and consciousness flows. Data visualisation tools such as tag clouds help strategists identify trending topics and emergent themes, and subsequently used to spot issues that require further investigation and probing.

Idea generation and collaboration innovation

Recognising that traditional research techniques can sometime be a one-way street, we worked with Added Value to develop a number of collaborative tasks and techniques that allow members of the communities to generate and share ideas, and then select winning ideas. This co-creation technique is widely accepted as a new paradigm that brands are quickly latching on to as they seek to enhance their innovation  capabilities.

Usability, training and adoption

Today,  many of us use social software in our own private lives, but relatively few are adopting them in the workplace to enhance productivity and, as in this case, support greater insight and connectedness.  Knowing this, we worked in partnership with Added Value on a rigorous education and adoption program for key Added Value stakeholders, including a regular series of global webinars and inspiration sessions. These sessions also provide the opportunity for valuable debate that feeds into the platform's ongoing development program.

The AV-id platform and  methodologies it supports are being deployed around the world everyday by Added Value, and in languages including Spanish, French, Polish, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Korean and Italian.

As well as being used to engage consumers and experts, AV-id is equally at home engaging internal stakeholders - marketers, R&D teams, designers etc - and creating internal innovation communities.

For Bel - a global food company - AVid was deployed to help marketers, R&D professionals and designers come together to create new ideas and innovative solutions to everyday problems they face.

To-date, brands including Pepsi Lipton International, Meetic, Tefal, Reliant Energy, and Barilla among others have embraced the AV-id approach.