Using blog tools for research and innovation

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.

Categories: IdeaStream, Technology.

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