If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words can a video buy you? As smartphone adoption rises in Australia, it’s only natural for research to have a presence in this arena.

Latitude has recently completed its first qualitative mobile phone study – talking to 22 mums and their kids. Over a period of two weeks we asked mums for feedback, challenged them to tasks, sent them on shopping trips and had them interview their kids (all done with smartphone in hand!). In total they generated over three hundred video clips for the project.

One of the benefits of using mobile for qualitative research is its ability to effectively collect point in time data. Through this medium we were able to observe behaviours as they happened at home, in the supermarket and during usage occasions, allowing us to better understand the decision-making process.

A new innovation for research – keep posted for more learnings about mobile qual!

As community managers we surround ourselves with people of differing ages, genders, backgrounds, attitudes and opinions in our communities. It’s part of what makes communities so interesting. We get to understand the differences and similarities between members, draw an overall consensus and then provide valuable insights to our clients.

Dealing with members with such varying backgrounds, opinions and outlooks can therefore be a difficult process. We aim to get to know people throughout the period that the community runs, and it is true that as we go along, you get a better understanding of what you can talk to some members about; how much you can ask them and importantly what topic of conversations are taboo or not. In the first weeks though it is worth being cautious as something that you may say flippantly without even thinking may actually be offensive to a member.

Think about real life, the first time you meet someone, it is pretty unlikely that you’ll be asking them who they voted for in the last election or how much they earn each year in the first few minutes of conversation. Sure these may be relevant questions at some point but think about how you would feel being asked this in the first week of a community or the first time you meet someone.

A good example of mine was a discussion which took place around Easter which aimed to investigate how much the meaning of Easter had diminished over time and the reasons for this. Whilst  most of us have an opinion on the matter, it was early in a community and had the potential to create divisions between those with differing opinions of a religious nature. Whilst healthy argument can be a good way to really delve into the true thoughts of members, fractures in the membership surrounding issues of religion or other sensitive topics can be very damaging.

Trust must be built up with members in order to get the best from them. It is built over time and you can’t expect someone to provide you the most insightful responses without their trust.

A tip that I now have in the back of my mind when talking to members in the community is that if you are any way concerned or worried about what you are writing and how it could be understood by a member then it is safer to not ask the question at all.

Sometimes it’s not the questions that we ask which are important in getting the best out of members but the ones that we don’t.

“I think that you and I should get closer. I’d like to find out more about you – your thoughts, values, dreams and aspirations… I’ve designed this survey, could you please fill it out?”

This analogy illustrates the discrepancy between research objectives, and the methods used to reach those aims. The disconnect between purpose and process leaves some gaps to fill when it comes to talking to participants.

Insights Communities are astonishingly adept at bridging these gaps, with members frequently willing to share the most personal details about their lives. The online platform, has permitted such intimacy between researcher and community member…

Speaking to members in ‘natural environments’

Today conversing online is an ordinary form of communication, which participants are comfortable with. Familiar environments, equal more open disclosures

Spending A LOT of time with members

Moderators spend months or even years with the same participants, building a rapport that is unparalleled to more traditional research methods

Sharing a mutual understanding

The ‘kinship’ between moderator and member is reflected in participants’ readiness to genuinely ‘help you out’. For little, to no monetary reward, most members are often eager to go above and beyond what was initially asked of them at recruitment

Why?

Members invest in their relationship with the brand. They appreciate the sense of being heard, and contributing to decisions the brand makes. By the end of the community it is often the members who don’t want it to stop.

The marriage of purpose and process

Through the developed relationship between moderator and member, researchers gain a broader understanding into the lives of participants,  leading to richer insight. Insights Communities marry the research purpose and process – now that’s a relationship!

Latitude prides itself on delivering insights not information but more recently we have been focussed on driving insights more than ever (pardon the pun!).  Last week, Latitude Insights took to the motor show to check out the latest in motoring.

Our first stop … the soon to be released Nissan LEAF – the first mass produced, purpose built electric vehicle to enter the Australian market.   Kerralie took to the stage to test drive a Nissan LEAF almost breaking the speedometer at 139km/hr.  This is the first time a car has been allowed to be driven inside the motor show – because the LEAF has no tail pipe emissions, it’s safe to drive inside or out.  Although with Kerralie at the wheel, I’m not sure how safe we really were ;-)

Latitude is proud to be working with Nissan in the lead up to the launch of the LEAF.

Researching the LEAF is a fascinating experience for us and we are excited to be part of the changing motoring landscape.

Look out for more driving insights in the future…

When I first started working with online communities I used to agonise over what I was going to talk to my members about to keep them engaged and interested. Trying to keep abreast of current events, latching on to anything interesting that might have happened out in the ‘big wide world’ to chat about.

But what I soon discovered (quite quickly, thankfully!) was that it was the more everyday musings and mundane snippets of my life that elicited the most response. The more I was just ‘me’ and shared my (sometimes very random) streams of consciousness the more community members responded. Blogs about peanut butter toast, accidentally coming to work with a stain on my shirt, feeling overwhelmed by laundry and the like had members laughing, commiserating and sharing similar stories both with me and each other. It’s the little things we all have in common that connect us more than we realise.

Not only has this made my job far easier, but highlights one of the main motivations for members participating in communities. And why we call them communities in the first place. We are social creatures, naturally interested in other people’s lives. Being a real person made me as much a member of the community as the ‘respondents’ I was ‘moderating’.

I let them into my life and get to see into their lives in return.

This is one of the key strengths of online communities in research. Members get comfortable, get real, and reveal truths about themselves. A genuine bond and sense of belonging develops. Something that I have never achieved in years of moderating focus groups.

As we are seeking to reveal deep consumer insights, that has to be a good thing!

News.com.au has launched a visual map, Cabinet Confidential, which charts the political relationships within the Labor government. Interactive journalism at its best, this venture captures a wider audience – one that may not be partial to reading long political articles. Essentially, it’s a snapshot of major players, positions held, and powers of “Labor’s top ranks”.

Digital has made data visualisation progressively more interactive. In the NewMR’s ‘New approaches to presenting data’ webinar, Peter Harris introduced a range of data visualisation tools that allow researchers to take advantage of the digital sphere. Gradually, these tools will become commonplace for information industries, where the ‘entertainment factor’ in presenting data will deliver the highest impact.

News.com.au’s editor, Paul Colgan initiated the Cabinet Confidential project saying, “One of the things that the news media rightly gets accused of is not harnessing new technology enough to improve storytelling”. Are there lessons here for market research?

According to research done by Google recently, there will be more web searches done on mobile phones than will be done on desktops by 2013. In more traditional markets like Australia and the US, a more standard progression in technology has seen the desktop become a feature of most households over the past 15 years. However in emerging markets such as India and China, access to desktop computers was limited during their expansion in the west and now instead of following the trend of western markets, consumers in these countries are skipping desktop computers and the fixed internet connection in preference of mobile devices. Across the world mobile internet usage has increased 3000% in the last three years, largely driven by the access that consumers in emerging economies have to these previously out of reach devices.

It seems only natural that research should take advantage of this shift in reliance on mobile internet usage. Whilst being able to contact a respondent at their desktop at any time at any place has always been one of the foundations of online research’s benefit over traditional methodologies, mobile research takes this one step further and allows us to interact with respondents in their natural surroundings whenever we want.

The convenience of being able to reach for our phones and access the Internet anywhere is something that should be jumped upon by researchers. The devil makes work for idle hands, so why not use time when sitting on a train, in front of the TV at home as a time to undertake research.

A company in New Zealand has done something very similar. After the devastating earthquake in Christchurch, the plumbing to houses has been significantly impacted and residents are having to make do with portaloos installed on street corners. In these portaloos, a firm has begun recruiting participants for research through adverts placed on the walls. Surveys asking for opinions about the reconstruction efforts are sent and in some cases completed whilst…umm…taking care of business.

Being constantly connected through Internet enabled phones presents such a strong opportunity for companies to get an immediate read on their consumers. To take advantage of even the shortest amount of downtime to complete research can easily be seized upon. Being able to get feedback in either a qualitative or quantitative study could potentially take hours, not days or weeks.

When moderating communities, you do your best to engage with members and present yourself in a way that makes them comfortable with contributing and posting their thoughts. Being a similar type of person to the members in the community is extremely important so to understand and relate to their opinions. As a male I’m not going to be the best person to moderate a community for pregnant women. How could I ever pretend to relate to members? That just would not work.

It’s for this reason that I was chosen to moderate a community of young (mainly male) students who had just started university. It was felt I was well placed to relate to their lives, interests, thoughts and opinions. Sure, it has been a few years since I graduated university but how much could have changed? I was 18 once. I can relate.

I have come to realise that things have changed. Firstly and probably most significantly is that prevalence of ‘text speech’ becoming a more and more accepted means of writing. Words are replaced with numbers (2 instead of to / too), acronyms replace phrases (By the way becomes BTW) just to name a couple of these intricacies.

In order to best connect with members, I have had to adapt my language and tone to ensure students are comfortable with opening up to me and as such have taken to posting discussions and blogs in the language of the youth. It has been a challenge and I usually find myself writing as I normally would, re-reading and then altering words and phrases to adapt to this strange new language. I’m definitely not there yet but i think that im getting used 2 usin sum of this 2 improve the way i connect wif students. Gr8 isnt it.

I’m interested to see if anyone else has had experiences of their own that they’d like to share?