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

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.

We're looking for a developer to help us enhance our video applications and tools. Specifically this person should have :

• Experience indeveloping small webcam and streaming video applications in Flash and ActionScript
• Knowledge of changing video stream / recording quality on the fly
• Past experience detecting available bandwidth, current frame rate, and dropped frames (a bonus)

What we're not looking for are agencies to pester us and waste our time. We work with a select few agencies and aren't looking to change that. Thank you.

If this sounds like you, or someone you know, why not drop us an email to wearehiring@dubstudios.com with your CV and covering letter including why you the right person for us.

We've been very busy here at Dub,  enhancing the latest version of IdeaStream, our online qual research and digital innovation platform. Built by researchers for researchers, IdeaStream is the result of several years combined research, learnings and technical experience, not to mention the invaluable feedback we receive from our clients. These factors have allowed us to build the most powerful and flexible products on the market, and one that we're incredibly proud of.

The latest version of IdeaStream brings with it a suite of useful developments that no only extend its technical capability, but also the range of methodologies it supports. Over the next few weeks, we are going to share more information about these tools and methodologies with you, and give you a closer look at what makes our work so successful. We'll kick-off this week with a closer inspection of IdeaStream's blog tool, followed shortly by a look at the brainstorm, group discussion, live and quantitative tools IdeaStream has to offer.

OVERVIEW
IdeaStream's blog tool takes inspiration from the behaviours that have been forged over the last 10 years of so by blogging platforms the likes of Blogger and WordPress. Most importantly, a task built using the blog tool is inherently personal. Each person assigned a blog task is effectively being given their own blog. For example, if you are running a project and assign 10 participants the same blog task, you are in effect creating 10 unique blogs - 1 for each person, all controllable from a single administrative dashboard. This differs from, say, IdeaStream's Group Discussion tool, whereby a single 'discussion' that is created is effectively published for all (invited) participants to contribute to.

WHEN AND WHERE
IdeaStream's blog tool is best used when you want to capture personal thoughts, expressions and opinions, or if you want participants to immerse yourselves with the the consumer and have them share  their lives, rituals or habits in detail, using multimedia. Blog tasks can be run for just a few days, requiring only a few posts, or as on-going diaries and journals where participants are required to provide input regularly over time. These can last for weeks or even months.

The multimedia upload capability of IdeaStream's blogging tool means you can offer your participants a wide range of methods to express themselves (within the confines of your area of investigation of course). This can be great for idea generation tasks where participants can use the upload tools to bring their thoughts and opinions to life.

Journals and Diaries
We've already written about the benefits of Digital Diaries as an Online Qual Methodology, but it's worth spending more time extolling the virtues of this immersive and longitudinal study technique that harnesses IdeaStream's blog tool perfectly. Diaries and journals are very personal expressions and accounts, and both benefit from the ability to share text, film and pictures to gain a richer illustration of the participant's life experiences. What's more, as a pre-task, using IdeaStream makes for a much more efficient process in terms of the setup process and administering the exercise to participants. We've all experienced the pain of writing paper diaries, couriering them out to people all over the country (or world), only to have the client change their mind on a whim resulting in the need to repeat the process over again. Doing this digitally means that you can quickly and easily make last-minute changes, as well as allowing you to add new micro-tasks at any time over the course of the exercise.

KEY FEATURES
IdeaStream's blog tool carries a range of features that help researchers deliver the most effective and targeted tasks that achieve the highest possible participation rates. These include the following:

Multimedia tasks
When creating tasks in IdeaStream, Community Managers (Moderators) can upload multimedia in support of the exercise or activity. This can serve two purposes; to visually communicate the thrust of the exercise or two share stimulus that respondents are to review and respond to. In the case of the former, an exceptionally successful technique is have the Community Manager film themselves setting the activity or exercise using the integrated webcam feature. This humanises the task, giving it real character and personality. It also engenders a level of empathy that text-only tasks sometimes fail to do. In turn using this technique increases the level of participation and the quality of posting, and also encourages participants to use their webcams to respond - a rich and very engaging response method.

Social settings
As with all IdeaStream tools, when the Community Manager creates a blog task, they have the option to select a unique social settings for that task. Social settings controls who within the participant community can see content generated by other members, and who they can interact with as they discuss and debate what others have said. The settings available are as follows:

• Social - Output from tasks with this setting can be seen by everyone within the community
• Social within Segment -  Output from tasks with this setting can only be seen by people within the same segment
• Private - Output from tasks with this setting can only be seen by the post author.

So for example, if a blog task is set to 'social', then participants assigned that task will be able to see the content generated by all other participants. The 'Private' setting does the opposite and results in participants only seeing content they themselves have posted.  These vital controls offered by IdeaStream allow researchers to approach areas of investigation in different ways. For example, when discussing subjects of a sensitive or very personal nature,using the 'Private' setting reassures the participant that their responses will be viewed in the strictest of confidence.

Multimedia upload
Like other blogging platforms, IdeaStream's blog tool lets participants post text, pictures and rich video. They can easily embed video from third-party websites like YouTube and Vimeo, as well as recording film using their webcam and uploading fill shot on mobile phones or video cameras. By providing this range of options, IdeaStream opens up an exciting range of methodologies for researchers and innovation experts. For example, the webcam can be used to conduct at-home interviews and thus immerse oneself in the life of the consumer. Another successful technique is to prepare interview sheets (as PDF downloads), and have participants print them off then run through the questions whilst filming themselves using their webcam. Even better, they work with a friend or family member who can interview them.

Probing (private/public)
Essential to online cal research is the ability to probe and interrogate participant's responses. In the digital world, this activity is often referred to as 'commenting'. By default, comments are posed in public, meaning all other participants can see comments administered by Community Managers. IdeaStream also offers the ability for Community Managers to administer 'private' comments, that are only visible to the individual participant. This feature supports the notion that researchers often want to probe with deep, sensitive questions during the course of a study.

Auto-prompting
To help make the life of the researcher and Community Manager easy and more efficient, IdeaStream includes an auto-prompting feature. When the researcher of Community Manager sets up their blog task, they have the ability to activate 'auto-prompts' should the participant fail to respond to the task over a set period of time. If and when participants fail to respond, they receive polite notice and links to the task via their email inbox.

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?

At the heart of IdeaStream - Dub's powerful online research community platform - are a range of multimedia uploading and conversation tools that respondents use to share and express their views, opinions and ideas, all in the name of primary research.

All of our engagement tools, which include blogs, forums, questionnaires and polls, are task-based. This means each time a participant interacts, there is a clearly defined purpose and objective to it.

It's important that our clients harness these tools appropriately in order to create the right methodology. A well constructed task that uses the appropriate tool will result in high quality participation and rich responses from engaged participants. To ensure the best possible results, Dub provides support to researchers with the design of tasks.

So far so good. But how do you decide which is the best tool to use from the available options?  In this blog post I'm going to highlight when to use blogs and forums, and the different approaches they offer.

Clients often ask us to explain the difference between blogs and forums, not least because to many, they share the same characteristics. For example, with both these tools in our research software, it's possible for participants to share text, web links, pictures and video. They can also comment on posts left by others. There are, however, some fundamental differences.

Blogs
Each blog task creates a unique blog for individual participants. For example, if you create a blog task that you want the entire group or community to participate in, you will create as many blogs as there are community members. In other words, participant A will be responsible for filling out his blog, while participant B will be responsible for filling out their blog. They can each go and look at the other member's blog and comment on their posts, but they are individual blogs.

A typical example of when to use the blog tool is when you want individual participants to share day-to-day aspects of their lives - in a diary format. The blog tool is also very effective for creative tasks whereby you want participants to bring a product to life - perhaps by creating, naming, drawing and making an advertisement.

Forums
Forum tasks are shared between all participants. As such, no one person is responsible for a forum. If you create a group discussion for all participants to take part in, then you create a forum topic that all members can access and post to. So, participant A will post to, and leave comments on, the same forum as participant B posts to and leaves comments on, and so on.

Forums are excellent when you want a group discussion that is not led by any one individual in particular. For example, if you want participants to share insights around a shared experience - places where they shop, cooking techniques they have picked up, giving advice about a specific topic. Forums are also great when you want to debate topics.

So, in a nutshell, blogs are personal and forums are shared.

If you would like to know more about how Dub can help you deliver creative online research, please get in contact with Stephen Cribbett at stephen@dubstudios.com

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

At last week's Social Media World Forum (#smwf), Andy McLoughlin, co-founder of Huddle, gave a stirring presentation about their business, why and how it came to be, and why collaborative, on-demand solutions are the future.

Here's the presentation in full (courtesy of my shiny new Flip camera - I love it!)

A bit like the new book Rework, by 37signals, that I reviewed recently, this was a must-see talk for small businesses, and a valuable lesson that often the most successful businesses are founded to 'scratch your own itch', or solve a problem that blights you personally in everyday life. In Huddle's case it was how to work in teams and collaborate remotely with co-workers, without the need for email.

Another experiment in how to work sans email is being conducted by Luis Suarez over at IBM. Luis is 2 years, yes 2 years, into his experiment and has successfully reduced his inflow of emails to an average of just 14 a week. If ever there was a supporting case for the adoption of social software, this surely must be one of the most compelling!

Engadget, one of the leading gadget blogs on the internet, recently decided to turn off commenting on articles. Their claim is that in in recent days commenting has got 'out of hand', with a few people creating an environment that they feel is 'ugly, pointless and threatening'.

It's a bold move, and one I suspect they did not take lightly. By their own admission, and inline with the oft cited 1% rule, only a small percentage of their readership comment. However, the feature is considered one of the basic tenants of social media - allowing motivated readers to become part of the debate. Indeed, it's features like commenting, along with the low barriers to entry, ability to syndicate across multiple platforms/channels, etc. that have helped the format grow to the size, variety and popularity it has today.

Benefits aside monitoring comments, filtering out the spam and ensuring abuse is kept at bay can be a difficult process. Blog authors have options, which include:

• Moderation - before a comment is displayed online, it must be 'cleared' by a site administer, ensuring no detrimental posts get through. However, this can take away the immediate gratification users have come to expect and cause commentors to feel they're being censored. Such a process also becomes unfeasible for a site that is as popular (and has such a high number of generated comments) as Engadget.
• Spam filters - Great for some removing the 'v1Agra' type of spam message we have all come to despise, but limited when it comes to deciding if a well composed comment is inappropriate
• Community-managed voting - only displays comments that have been given a positive vote by readers. Very 'hands-off' for site owners, but requires an extra level of interaction from users
• Register to vote - Great for blogs with a small following - e.g. personal holiday blogs, but becomes difficult to track with large and manage with large user base. Equally, as user names and passwords are required each time, barriers to entry for commenting (especially for casual commentors) become very high
• Threading - this allows people to comment on comments. It doesn't stop spam comments, but it does conversations to diverge. Sites like Slashdot take this approach to the extreme, allowing unlimited 'threading'. The side effect is that this can quickly become confusing to the casual observer. Limited threading is a useful

Our advise at Dub is to try and take maximum advantage of the medium and be as open to viewer comments as possible. As you can see, there are a myriad approaches to helping mange comments. Unfortunately, for some publishers all the options in the world can't stop the trolls and spammers of this world.

Read Engadget's full statement here

Given all the excitement and media attention that Steve Jobs' new gadget has received, we thought we'd get our tech leader, Sam Regan, to review it. Here's what he had to say...

The iPad is an interesting foray in to the tablet market. Apple are claiming they are creating a new category of device. However, in reality it's just marketing hyperbole. The category has already existed, all be it with little success outside of niche use. What they have achieved is to bring legitimacy to the form factor, something Apple has a proven record of delivering.

From a hardware perspective the device falls short. Commonly used interfaces are missing: SD / Micro SD storage, proper USB device connection, camera and video being the most obvious.

It's the user-interaction that is exciting. The device will enable people to share online content and media while in the same physical location. we all know the pain of showing holiday photos with others; standing around the laptop or PC. The iPad will simplify this and make the experience much more pleasurable and engaging - flipping the device and having photos re-orientate themselves automatically for example.

Equally, I can see multi-player gaming being quite exciting on this whether you are in the same room as your opponents or not. The replacement of board games such as Chess or Scrabble immediately spring to mind. Interactive-learning between a parent and child is not to be underestimated with such a tool, not to mention how much fun research could become - no more boring surveys!

In reality it's an over-sized iPhone (or iTouch) but it's the scaling up into a device that more than one person can use at the same time that really gets me interested.