Winning with Online Qualitative Research: Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices for Clients and Suppliers

all right everybody it is the top of the hour so let's go ahead and get started um my name is bill mcdowell i'm ceo here at accelerant research and i am going to be our final presenter of the day in the quarantine virtual insights conference subject of my talk is going to be winning with online qualitative research tips tricks and best practices for clients and suppliers the gang here at accelerant we've done online qual for a number of years um and i wanted to kind of share some of the the experiences that that we've had in addition to you know us all collectively being sort of thrust into you know having very little options outside of online qualitative uh these days and under the current circumstances that we're in uh same reason we're doing this conference uh you know virtually as opposed to in person uh qualitative research has had to shift substantially you know if you if you want to get it done chances are you're doing it virtually in some way shape or form um i'm going to go through really quick our our ground rules just as a reminder for for our presentation and the conference itself um we are at the mercy of tech uh zoom has been a pretty good platform we're using it along with uh streaming uh in parallel on youtube you know so far so good we've had a lot of luck with with the tech it hasn't cracked out on us but should it happen no problem we are recording and we will post archive um i'm going to apologize if you know if audio or video goes out but it is what it is living in the current world that that we are um be respectful no trolling um that that mandate is more for for our previous guest speakers um you know because i'm the host it's all right you can be as mean to me as you wish i'm cool with that um network engage and interact i definitely invite you to to you know to interact get into the the q a the chat um you know share your own experiences uh tell me about you know what you've run into trying to do qualitative research virtually um especially you know this year and what experiences you you've had um i'm actually going to try to pull up the chat while we're while we're speaking here just so i don't miss anything um yeah so i'm gonna make this you know as interactive as possible uh it's gonna be a little a little on the dirty side in terms of just you know raw um a little bit more unrehearsed off the cuff uh that's kind of by design what i'm planning to do is show you a bunch of examples a bunch of potential techniques hashtag qual hacks that you you can employ yourself um you know and this is going to be sort of bouncing around from the angle of the participant the moderator the you know internal research stakeholder the end end user of of the insights that are being shared so trying to you know pay as holistic a picture as possible um come at it from a lot of different angles uh but i'm i you know i have a tendency to bounce around so like i say you know get get in the chat and you know share anything with me that that you have questions about or that you you know want to learn more about um let's see here sorry [Music] i'm gonna check my notes from time to time um i have sort of a rundown of you know things i want to discuss um but it's going to be kind of like your your qualitative discussion guide as it were in that i may go off script if anything else comes up definitely you know you guys stop me don't don't be shy don't be afraid um like i said i'm gonna show you share a lot of different techniques thoughts and examples um but if you think that all of these should be applied to to any one particular research study i have to say you are out you damn mine because it's a it's a lot you know it trying to incorporate all this in any any one study would be um simply insanity so this is really meant for you know example purposes this is you know trying to get you thinking right um i will say that i am i'm an ops guy so i'm going to be coming at this from the angle you know less of the back end analysis less of the presentation of results and more on the nuts and bolts the methodologies the logistics of getting qualitative research done i think ari our our previous speaker did a fantastic job of kind of breaking down interview techniques how to ask questions pregnant pauses all that wonderful stuff um and so what i'm going to focus on is more about you know just the the logistics of what it takes to sort of get get you to the point where you can receive these these these insights right and i'm going to start with a couple of examples to to sort of just you know level set us and first one i have is from from a i believe this was the february publication of the grit report um asking insights professionals what type of qualitative research they do regularly or occasionally and if you look at the top two on this list in person focus groups in-person idis i have to assume that in-person idi is also would uh would include like in-home or job site ethnographies um as well as uh in facility ideas um wow uh so you know we've got what pushing two-thirds using focus groups regularly and i know we see you know there's a lot of conversation these days you look at a lot of the the you know the quirks and green books and publications out there that you know that talk about you know a lot of the the types of of research methods that are on the cutting edge but you know for many and most in in this industry sitting down in a focus group facility is still still a big thing or was you know up until february march of this year um so wow i mean we've we've had to have an enormous shift right um i'm actually gonna show you one more example real quick i'm gonna just let's see i'm gonna stop sharing for just a moment and i am going to without giving you seasick hopefully i'm going to pan my webcam to show you that i am sitting in a focus group facility in charlotte north carolina um there's proof right there i've got my one-way glass right there um and guess what this focus group facility is being used for a webinar and not actual focus groups because there's this pandemic thing you guys may have heard of um you know we've stopped hosting uh in person focus groups as of gosh yeah i guess it was around march um and really you know no end in sight there not you know i i've definitely seen some some facilities that are that are beginning to to reopen um but we're we're not there yet uh to be to be honest uh we're sticking with with online and the whole point of this you know this talk today is to hopefully if you are among you know these big groups up here that have always done in person or if that has you know been the majority of the research that you've done um that's what we're here to talk about uh so those were my two examples um and i don't know if you noticed but uh when you saw me in the in that mirror i am 100 uh wearing gym shorts and sneakers right now because i'm just shoulders up for for for the webinar um you know i think the current state of of things um you know when it comes to corporations just being you know effectively travel banned you know nobody's going into the office nobody is you know certainly sending their employees out for travel um even as different you know localities in in the country start starting to open back up you know the chances of actually traveling to a given market and conducting in-person research at least for the foreseeable future there there's not a lot of that that's going to be happening but what is happening you know and i think early in the year there was sort of a frantic shift you know as things started to shut down um we had a very big initial push for any in-person research that was happening uh needed to quickly go online but then from there you know we've definitely seen a fair amount of research being conducted online but i think there's also been you know especially for the summer months a lot of wait and see um you know sort of waiting for the storm to pass and it's becoming increasingly apparent that you know at least the conditions as they are right now likely through the end of this year and probably well into 2021 um in one way shape or form are still going to be here so you know we all as suppliers as corporate researchers as you know academics agency workers you name it you know we are all essentially serving organizations and the show must go on insights needs are are there and and information needs to be captured and we've got to figure out you know ways to get at that um so i'm going to attempt to take these you know these first few uh different methods uh types of research and you know kind of share ways that we can pivot if you're used to doing it this way maybe you know these are things that you consider um if you've been doing it already like i said just you know share it let us know uh what you've been up to right um because i think we're like i said we're all serving you know different organizations i think a lot of times we tend to get into these sort of pigeonholed patterns as researchers when objectives come down the pike and they are in this form we do this type of research a lot of times it is you know just by default um focus groups or by default uh in home ethnographies you know when those kind of go-to methods are taken off the table it it's scary but it almost presents to us you know a little bit of an exciting time as researchers because you know we can kind of go to this sort of clean slate place and focus on okay you know here are the objectives and this is what researchers do in general anytime you're you're given objectives and design a research study you think about you know what are the conditions i'm existing within you know what's my budget what what does you know my timing look like uh what are the what are the internal uses of the information that i'm going to be providing based on the answers to those questions you design a research study now you've got new factors on top of on top of budget on top of timing now you've got you know restrictions in terms of even how you can go about doing that research so you know it's it's a time when we can actually be a little bit on the creative side which is kind of cool right um so i'm going to go through several methods and examples um and this is online qual uh a lot is going to be webcam based just like you know we're doing right now i'm on a zoom cam everyone and their cousin has been using these these types of web meetings for the past several months um if you hadn't been using them before pandemic you certainly aren't now um you know it's very similar to how uh research can be conducted with with participants right um and you know i'm going to start at the top of the list of the the report that we were looking at and you know focus groups were you to take in-person focus groups and do them online well it's these webcam-based uh you know multiple screens just like the zoom meetings that everybody is is taking part in i'm obviously being you know sarcastic here with with showing the the brady bunch as the example but it's it's you know this is what i refer to these interviews as you've got lots of panels and lots of people talking to one another and looking at one another um you're led by moderator you know i think the larger the groups get you know you've got six eight people in an in-person focus group um it's easier to to keep track of and to you know kind of wrangle the crowd as it were you've got six eight people in a webcam group um and i'm sure we've all been on zoom meetings of late you know the more bodies you start to get into it the more little little windows the more opportunity for for background noise for you know distractions for multitasking for people that you know just aren't able to pay attention quite as well you know that is an area when it comes to in-person research that that we miss you know is that the interaction you know being in the same room the energy um is at times difficult to recapture uh virtually my recommendation for this tends to be smaller groups um so if you you know in person you default to the six to eight person focus group i would highly recommend considering the the dyads or or the the triads for for webcam-based focus groups um the smaller groups tend to be a little more intimate and you know there aren't as many you know cats to hurt as it were um but it almost sort of begs the question and this is one that we'll ask a lot of times is you know is a group discussion even appropriate or is it better to be doing one-on-one research i think you know for a long time the default has been in person focus groups and a lot of that had to do with you know just efficiency's sake um you know you really do have to ask the question especially now that we're being pushed online um is it appropriate to be doing the the the larger group or even multiple participants or you know can you default back to the one-on-one interview um and i'm gonna share an example of of the one-on-one interview so we've got you know different ways you've got in-person in-home ethnographies right that's kind of a tried-and-true way of of conducting qualitative um again that you go back to that grit report slide and that is you know the in-person one-on-ones it's one of the top types of research that that's getting done um can't do that right now but what you can do is what we like to lovingly refer to as the show-and-tell ethnography so actually having participants and i'm going to bring in a participant at least attempt to so krista is going to join me there she is so chris is a team member of mine but she's also a mom and you can see strewn in the background there are a bunch of toys of her daughter journeys and a journey is somewhere um but guess what kids for whatever reason they just you know they're not the most cooperative participants um i would actually argue that this sort of show-and-tell method of research um especially when you're doing research among kids but just about any you know product category uh can be done in many cases even better using webcam and i think this is a fairly new phenomenon there i'd say probably you know a few years ago uh online qual webcam baseball not so much hey mike that was great um yeah years ago you know it was like talking to someone on the space shuttle right you had the very choppy audio and video feed it it was difficult to pull you know to pull off um that's not the case anymore people you know especially since pandemic has come into play um people are just comfortable sharing online everybody and their grandparents literally are on facetime or on scott you've got zoom family reunions happening left and right you know people are very comfortable sharing via this method um so why not as researchers take advantage of that so no longer do we have to send the the ethnography crew out to them you know we can actually just essentially you know pop the webcam on and let the participant do their thing in terms of you know talking with us yes going through guided discussion but also showing us you know the the product categories that they're using showing the things that they that they do on a regular basis good job kristen she's in the back riding on her scooter around the house yeah so if i'm doing scooter you know research and i want to have a product tester well guess what journey is you know she's a great candidate and if you ever do kids kids research in facility you know putting them at home in their natural habitat makes them a little more comfortable they don't have this weird you know research crew breathing down the neck and and distracting them that can sort of you know just just do all right krista good job thank you very much thanks bye bye everyone so you know the next one on our one of the yeah i think it was the next one on the list on that grit report rundown uh was telephone idis um that was actually something that surprised me a lot i know we still we still do them a lot they're you know they're great especially in b2b setting but i didn't realize how widely used they still were um especially now you know within pandemic with everyone you know in just about every corporation you can you can imagine getting their zoom on as it were [Music] i i would make a strong argument in many cases against the the audio only or the telephone based idi um and moving it into a a web meeting platform like a zoom for example um and even if there are reasons you know that sometimes especially with b2b research you know you've got sensitive information you've got you know folks that for for one reason or another shouldn't be sharing screen or or you know showing their webcam um even doing leveraging the the audio only function in in a zoom in in a go-to meeting in microsoft teams um you can have some of these you know observer functions like the chat like you know some of the the q a um you know a lot of these programs have automatic transcription uh voice to text you can actually conduct phone based research just using these these very same platforms um so a little sidebar there uh the next one we're gonna go through is shop alongs uh so retail you know sending someone off to to a retailer meeting meeting them at the front of the grocery store and asking you know them to go on a shop along interview being you know tailed by the camera crew um that's a very popular bit of research uh but now that covid's taken taken hold of everything that's going to be a lot more difficult logistically to pull off um i'm going to ask erica to be our simulated uh simulated shopper and eric is outside so she's not in a retail store but you get the picture so erica's on her her smartphone she is hanging out outside it looks like a very pretty day so that's that's a good thing um all right so you know erica is at retail right you have a shopping task for her to do maybe as moderator you are in her ear speaking with her in real time maybe this is something that she's you know capturing as a homework assignment prior to maybe a sit-down interview um but she has the ability using her smartphone to to to walk through the store to go and and capture and sort of talk through everything and i'm saying in the chat david has a really good uh contribution uh gopros really good for for ethnographic interviews same way you know and i'll talk about it in a minute but one of the drawbacks of what erica is doing right now is the fact that you know at least one of our hands is is occupied right um so erica mind flipping your camera around sure all right so again erica is wow that's a really good looking back i'm at my parents house so i can't take credit but oh please do come on i'm jealous um no but you know in retail we can ask her to toggle back and forth you know pretending i'm your moderator and erica is the participant all of our attendees of of this webinar are the you know the client observers who are just watching behind the glass you know without the m ms or with them in it and sort of taking it in right um you may ask erica to if she is in in the retail store go on a shopping exercise you know go to a certain aisle just as we do when we're doing this you know side by side with again the camera crew following her along um yeah so you know all kinds of of possibilities and leveraging you know a lot of these platforms that are are in existence right now right you know i think one thing that we often do and even you can have for let's go through you know the checkout process um you know there are certain rules and and you know sensitivities around uh recording staff members at stores is definitely still the types of things that you want to make sure you're speaking with your your client about um you know thinking about it and talking about but you know often we'll do a shopping exercise um erica using her smartphone again and then maybe she makes a purchase and then we'll do a debrief interview uh maybe even in the parking lot in the car um asking her to to show us what she's purchased or or talk about some of the things that she has you know all kinds of different possibilities right well done and i like walking around simulating shopping um i wish you yeah i really tried to bring it to life there for you that was fantastic really really good stuff all right thank you man thanks bill okay so we talked about the shopalong interview um you know something that ari mentioned in the in the last interview is body language and you know if you're not careful you know if for example if i am a research participant and you're only seeing me shoulders up you know there may be things that that were missing um it's not you don't have to do and i hope erica was a good example but you you don't have to be you're just someone sitting at the kitchen table you know from from the shoulders up you can you know get them on their their wireless headphones have them walking around the room and and narrating and speaking with you um you know you try to get as creative as possible again you're thinking about what the objectives are and then figuring out what you know types of of exercises what types of you know things we should be asking of people so we can also get into like product testing you know there's a big e right um with you know your typical in person research a product test or asking someone to evaluate something um that's pretty easy right you ship enough of the product to the facility you have respondents unwrap it hold the package look at it talk about it um obviously that's that's a much more difficult thing to pull off right now um if you're doing this remotely can that still be done and the answer is yes but there are certainly considerations and things that you have to to take into account um you know you can very easily during recruitment ship product to participants um if it's a product that is in more like prototype form um if it is subject to actually being shipped um if it's something that already exists on store shelves well then i would argue that you know the exercise that erica just went through um the shop along you know works great as a homework assignment a task to to send people out you know prior to their their scheduled sit-down webcam interview have them go on a shopping test go purchase the thing that we're asking of them um you know we'll work that into their their incentive and compensation on the back end or you know prior to depending on the the expense of of the product um you know again sometimes it's prototypes that donate don't already exist um and you can ship them um other times it may be actually just exposing concepts um there is that we do a lot of what we like to to refer to as and this is not something that we made up in excel research uh unboxing interviews um you know this is something that you know kids on youtube and you know makeup influencers have been doing for quite some time you know they go out they go shopping they bring their stuff home and they unbox um bazillions of subscribers in the world of social media love to see this stuff um unboxing is is a really neat technique that can be used in research as well and on camera so you know i've got my box you know i was sent this product to to to evaluate right um things to be thinking about though you know during the objective rundown and figuring out what assignments are are for participants you know if i have been sent this product and you know the objective of the research is get my initial reaction to it you know i i need to be given an instruction during recruitment that i'm supposed to receive but not open maybe it's a prototype that i do need to open make sure all component parts are there so that you know come showtime when the interview is happening when you know executive stakeholders are you know watching the live stream that i actually can use the thing that i've been sent so you know depending on your objectives the method for or the instructions around the unboxing piece can differ quite a bit um also you know if it's one of these stupid plastic packages that takes you know a lot of hardware and tools to even get into um is that a worthwhile use of the interview time so ari was talking about you know one-on-one sit-down interview half hour is a good sweet spot and i couldn't agree more um do i want to spend you know 15 minutes of that half hour waiting for my participant to go to the kitchen junk drawer find the scissors and knife try to cut into this thing and you know only then start using the product if part of the research is to assess you know customer experience with regard to to the packaging to you know getting into it to you know the surprise that happens once they once they do open yeah cool if that is something that is not what this is about this is about maybe you know testing the the thing within the package um then maybe you want to have them do that prior right open it up don't mess with it then we'll talk um and participants are usually very good so long as you spell these kind of things out there during recruitment um these are things that that we have to think about that when you're doing focus groups and in person you don't right um so you know kind of keeping on the the whole experience um you know customer experience user experience kind of theme um you know maybe it's something a little more complex maybe i'm going to try to so maybe we can leverage screen sharing right so you know just as when i pull up a powerpoint presentation in in this this webinar um i can ask a participant to pull up you know and and screen share whatever it is that we're doing maybe it's an evaluation of the social media sites that they like to visit you know when it comes to dealing with whatever product category we're talking about maybe it's you know walking and we talk about the the in person you know the in-store shop along well so much shopping is happening virtually these days maybe it's you know pull up the smartphone screen and have participants actually you know sort of walk through and i'm going to attempt to to pull my screen up real quick okay so fun feature in zoom is the ability to [Music] mirror a a a smartphone um i this was not done on purpose but i should say that it is because you know part of my you know later presentation is you know about the that happens you know with just about any qual study but you know as you start to layer these complexities on um especially when dealing with tech um you know stuff happens right so i practice at home we've been working remotely uh doing my screen sharing but i made the mistake of you know not passing my firewall here in accelerant office and so i've got a smartphone that isn't mirroring properly um oops that's something that needs to be checked out out beforehand um so i'm gonna skip that piece but there is a very cool feature within zoom um within a lot of you know just web meeting platforms where you can actually mirror the phone screen if it's doing usability testing if it's you know all different types of research but what i am going to do i'm going to stick with my my phone here i'm going to let's say there is a more you know complex product that a participant is being asked to evaluate i'm going to go to zoom [Music] um and i'm going to come in as a second participant so here's mute myself somebody mind giving me a quick just update in the in the chat whether they're hearing a lot of a lot of background noise okay cool thank you dad all right so here's an example of you know product evaluation let's say that i'm being you know asked to set up a new voiceover iphone system in my office it's getting kind of weird with this two angles what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna flip my screen and something that usability labs do a really good job of there we go is you know you'll have behind the glass observers watching but then you also have kind of a close-up of the thing that they're interacting with you can kind of simulate the same thing by asking your participants to using their smartphone come in and and be basically two people at one time almost right so i'm a participant and i'm sharing my webcam and telling you about the experiences that i'm having while simultaneously i am attempting to set up my new polycom phone which is not plugged in but it's okay and let's say that you know the third element to this this research is that i as a participant am having trouble going through this this usability process and setting up well what i can do is i as a participant can be sharing my screen right so now i'm online i'm on polycom's you know website downloading their user manual and i'm sharing with the moderator you know still my webcam as well as my other webcam as well as the screen for you know the experience that i'm going through a lot of different possibilities there all right i'm going to stop that process and sharing again back to the powerpoint presentation yeah so there a lot going on with that you know sharing of multiple right um and my favorite spaceballs give you you find too many different camera angles and it gets a little like you're falling into the matrix um you know so lots of possibilities right um you know and if all else fails there is still the in-person option um it's just you know right now much tougher to pull off uh i've seen a lot of communication from from focus group facilities around the country you know they're implementing all kinds of different ways to to help and to start you know allowing folks to get back to in-person research to the extent possible um you know like i said here at accelerant we've kind of elected not to do some of those things um you know setting up the hockey penalty box plexiglas you know partitions between participants um the thing that we are entertaining at least at this point is you know when absolutely necessary uh doing one-on-one research in facility but even that i'm kind of strongly cautioning against um and the reason for that is just you know thinking about the participant experience thinking about you know the ultimate goal of you know trying to provide as much insights as possible right you know with any with any research study um under the the conditions that that you're facing um you know a big part of that you know if you have folks who are right now just you know uncomfortable going places you know bringing them into a facility unless absolutely necessary is going to it's going to mess with you know ability to to participate it's going to mess with the ability to share really good insights in many cases [Music] and that's what we're trying to avoid right but in person is still you know it's still doable but you know you have to take take great care be very careful as it were so platform selection is something that you know i find all too often is decided upon before the the research objectives uh are are put on paper and i think you know we tend to kind of make a mistake in doing so um you know we have a subscription to this platform so you know we're just automatically going to go that route for for for a bit of research um you know in many cases absolutely appropriate and and should be done um but my recommendation is always to take a step back and make sure that you know you're using the the mix of platforms to to facilitate the insights as best you can as opposed to sort of being painted into a corner to the extent possible um i will say that when it comes to selecting research platforms for conducting online qual um you know in clients heavy recommendation to very early on get with it and especially if you haven't been doing uh online uh get with it make sure that whatever platform that you're using um that it has has blessed it that you know it's it's been whitelisted that there's not going to be you know corporate firewall blockers in place to where the very people who should be sitting down and observing this research are not able to that's horrible um you know you and i've seen it happen before you know design this great bit of research recruits are going out you know as a lot of times when you're dealing with in person you know it's kind of an afterthought that yeah you know you've got to share you know the information then address for the for the phoenix facility because we got to plug it into our gps but that's not something that happens until you know a day or two before before the research goes live um with a line qual if you've done so you know you could find yourself day before showtime not being able to to allow half of the you know the observers to to view the research and that that's not a fun place to be um which is why i am actually a huge fan of just like we're using right now zoom or webex go to meeting uh microsoft teams these web meeting platforms are really good for conducting research and each has its own you know set of pros and cons um but all of them you know especially now they tend to be already vetted by by i.t internally and you know they're easy to pull off every most you know folks have had them already installed so it's a huge first step um you know and they're also just ubiquitous they are everywhere um but what i'm a real big fan of is you know going back to my first slide that that you know grit report rundown um i think we've always you know as researchers especially you know when you're kind of trained for for the in person you know we think of one option i've got a study these are my objectives it's qual and it has it's going to be focus groups or it's going to be in homes you know now and you know those interviews are going to last 90 minutes and i'm going to have these people these responders sit down i've got that amount of time to squeeze as much information out of them as possible now that that may not necessarily be the case you know i'm a huge fan of of mixing and matching platforms um so you know do a webcam interview like we are right now like some of these examples i'm going through uh but incorporate you know different different methods uh different platforms um and i'll show you a couple of a couple of examples of that um let me stop sharing and take you over to my web browser okay so picture if you will you've got webcam interview going on you've got you know everyone sitting all of your participants sitting at a computer let's leverage that you know think about when you're in in in-person focus groups and you're you know passing around the sheet of paper with the concept for people to make note on or mark up um you know and you moderator you know you you gather those at the end of the day you take them home in a huge folder and you tally up results obviously it's not for for quantitative you know assessment but you're going to report back on that you're going to code as you know aria was mentioning in his last um presentation that's what you do when you're when you're analyzing these results uh you know everybody and their cousin has a qualtrics account or or some you know type of online survey programming platform that they use why not incorporate some of that into your um into your qual research you know asking participants to answer you know some of those closed-ended type questions and you know this is no different than if you're doing an ad test or a concept test you're going to ask your participants to to rate on on a scale it's not necessarily you know again used for for projective uh reasons but it but it is to get a sense for you know what they think and to get them you know at least committed to the extent to which they like it so that they can then start you know describing in more detail um you know you can get into lots of different exercises using existing platforms like like quant research survey tools um you know think about something like a dial testing bit of research that maybe you've always done it in person using the handheld dials and that is just off the table right now well you could essentially get at the same type of thing using online dial tests um obviously if there are norms that you have been using with the handheld dials it's not going to be a one-to-one with you know online slider dials but you know if for example you're comparing a couple of mcdonald's ads you know that are you're considering rolling out there if it's all about the the comparison between them you know you're still getting some some really good insights rather than you know that's the way we've always done it we can't do it that way now so we can't do any research you know the idea here is to be able to at least you know get at some some options get to as much insight as you possibly can under the circumstances it's true with every single research study that you're going to be involved with um using bulletin board uh methodologies um you know they just as a standalone i think they're great so asynchronous methods right so as opposed to the one-on-one you know webcam-based interview doing bulletin board research um but you can also incorporate these types of platforms into these webcam interviews again i'm going to use the example of you know you you pass out the the new print ad to to your participants sitting around the table in the focus group and you ask them to you know take out their pen and circle the things they like put the next through the things that they don't like um why not go through the exact same exercise do so virtually for example you know here i am so this is actually a a platform that accelerate has developed it's called blognong uh blogging meets ethnography it's a bulletin board platform um you know as co-branding you know would would have it uh we're actually about to roll out a new version of it this is a sneak preview but you know i had to slide in that that little little plug right there but no i mean any platform um if you're using you know whatever kinds of you know online projective exercises are available out there you know for example looking at this coke ad i am being asked to circle the things that i like and comment about them the really cool thing about this is again rather than you know that big stack of of completed or you know scratched through uh paper versions of this print ad i have you know a heat map on the back end that's going to aggregate the these results again it's not quant per se it's but it does you know make for a nice addition to you to your research report being able to summarize and you know toss out a heap back that works um even you know the user zooms user testing platforms of the world um they can be fantastic for looking at uh you know online usability uh going through exercises recording screens um actually asking a participant to you know take part in an exercise like that while they're sharing within a zoom meeting you know you can sort of be over the shoulder as they're going through it you know it can be really fascinating um and then even getting into let me check my time i've got only a few minutes left i tend to ramble apologies um neuro research uh there's you know let's see let me stop shooting this a lot of different possibilities for for even doing neuro or you know bio research uh webcam archive video works fantastically for popping into uh facial coding software um and getting at you know the sentiment analysis that goes with um you know ecg built into the apple watch while asking a participant to to view a you know a television spot for example and you know watch what the heart rate does you know these are alternatives to the in person you know putting the cap on the shower cap on and looking at you know some of these biometrics but you know it is an alternative you don't have to necessarily just not do the research because you can't do it in person right now um webcam based you know webcam-based eye tracking for example there are some some really good platforms out there that allow you know just using the webcam that that everyone has in the in their their computer to do some some eye tracking type of research so keeping us all honest when it comes to time and you know if questions are coming through i'm going to apologize because i am starting to bump up against the end of the hours but definitely you know ask questions submit i'll flash my contact info at the end of this feel free to reach out with questions or with any issues or ideas or even thoughts um but i will say from the standpoint of the client observer and end user um i would say that the these folks this is arguably one of the biggest losses from not being able to do in-person research um and it's kind of the magic that can happen in the observation room um having the the team or all the stakeholders together at once in the same room you know and sequestered and thinking about this and the subject matter as as they're seeing it in front of them a lot of idea generation of debriefing of excuse me inspiration can happen during that time uh we lose out on that for with online call uh you know just about any web meeting platform is going to have the ability to you know to observe to watch from behind the virtual glass as it were but there is the temptation or the tendency to to multitask you know just as i'm sure some of you right now are you know my window is is minimized on the second screen and you're sort of glancing in every once in a while it's okay it is what it is um when you really have stakeholders internally who need to be paying attention to research it makes it tougher there are alternatives to doing that um i'm actually one that i really love and there are some apps out there that can be great for this but so my daughter my teenage daughter does uh you know during quarantine a lot of netflix watching parties so they're basically apps out there where you can log into netflix you know together watch together as if you're in the same room but you're doing so virtually and chatting with one another and giggling as it goes you know the same can be true uh of in clients you can set up you know on the one monitor watching the zoom interview that's happening on the second monitor have you know a slack conversation that's going on or you know microsoft teams or a zoom within within a zoom where you can be interacting with one another and talking with one another uh the fantastic thing about you know webcam based or or online is that that video is going to be captured um automatically and what that means is the ability to go back and potentially watch after the fact um you know i think you definitely still want to to assign roles within the organization there should always be someone internally who is watching all of the interviews live as they are happening um but as you go further up the the chain in the organization you know that becomes less and less possible right the higher level of sex they can't you know and the same thing is true within person maybe they can only make the flight to one market and sit in for for one or two groups um as an alternative with online qual what you can do is set up um playlists or you know sort of the binge watching you know we did 30 interviews of the course of the past three days you know here are the three or four that you really need to to sit down and watch um you know knock them out while you're on the treadmill um i'm also a big fan of of the sizzle reel as a deliverable on the back end you know again taking you know that massive amounts of data and cutting it down to you know the highlights right i'm doing on time almost there um so last thing i'm going to talk about and i'll do this really quickly is participant recruitment this is going to make or break your online qual study and you have to be thinking about what it is that you're going to be asking of these folks um participants are great you know to the extent that you tell them you're going to be asked to dedicate you know x amount of time of your life and we are going to incent you why they'll do you know whatever it is that you ask of them within those parameters but if you know part of the research is making sure they download a new new web tool a new app and it takes them you know an hour and a half with tech support to do that that's not a good thing necessarily so you know making sure that the participant you know we call this a tech check so whatever it is they're being asked to do making sure that they are able to to do it before the interview goes live the last thing that you want is an interview to be happening in real time and you know high level execs are observing and all you're doing is watching a participant try to figure out how to get their microphone to work that could have been you know taken care of during recruitment in a five-minute process um and i think i am just about out of time i definitely have a tendency to ramble but let me put my my info up here um definitely reach out to me if you have questions if you know there's anything that you'd like to discuss further um i'll definitely be here uh and i really do want to thank our other presenters today we are bumping up right against against the end here uh quick announcement that we will be doing sessions just like these uh in both september and october um so you know be able to look out for communications for those all right thanks a lot everybody uh stay safe and happy happy calling