To date, this year I’ve been involved in four major research projects and our primary research process typically consists of two parts:
The quantitative phase (where we plan an online survey, spend weeks cutting the data in different ways, identify patterns and trends and develop “sketch personas”) and then…
The qualitative phase, a series of telephone interviews and occasional focus groups; the end-goal being a detailed digital strategy piece accommodating trends, complete personas and short, medium and long term digital recommendations, mapped back to a business ROI.
Quantitative data and designing online surveys
Following a recent mobile usability event, I got chatting to a mobile specialist who positively flinched when I mentioned quantitative data. I realise “market research” is a dirty phrase in some circles, but hear me out before you dismiss the science completely. For a start, some clients are better than others at collecting data, so these online surveys are an important starting point in even detailing the general profile of their customers/fans/enquirers. Secondly, it’s not just about the numbers. Depending on the warmth of the data set, we get some fantastic comments, which not only make for interesting presentations, but also provide the necessary framework to design the discussion documents for the telephone interviews. Finally, we actively look at response feedback (rate & quality of feedback) for each survey, so we’re always evaluating if there’s a better way to ask a question, what works as a pre-set answer and what needs to be open text. We nearly always leave an “other” field for each question, even if we think we’ve identified all the possible options. Essentially, when we design such audience insight mechanics, we know we don’t always know what we don’t know.
Still with me?
Qualitative data and telephone interviews
I compared this process of interviewing consumers (and sometimes other stakeholders) recently to a “box of delights” rather than “boxing up people”, because it’s about capturing stories and experiences, rather than trying to generalise behaviours, though of course there is an element of that. Personally as a planner and a particularly people-focussed one, this almost feels like method acting to me because I spend weeks at a time organising interviews, conversing with interviewees, playing back the recordings and for brief periods of time I become immersed in these personas, so much so that it isn’t always an easy or comfortable process shifting between projects.
The importance of gaps and shadows
Even with the telephone interviews, we’re still relying on a certain level of awareness from consumers about what they do, what they absorb and what they’d find useful. So much of what we do gets absorbed into our subconsciousness, safely locked away from the probing questions of market researchers. The challenge (for us) with consumer interviews is that they don’t always know what they don’t know, particularly with industries where the choice between the competition is either ambiguous or minimal. The challenge for clients when presented with “we don’t always know what we don’t know” and “they don’t always know what they don’t know” is that they’re then faced with a recommendation into the unmapped territory of continuous audience insight and integrating a dynamic feedback loop, rather than the quick-fix solution they were hoping for. That’s not to say that quick-fix solutions don’t come out of research, they do… lots of them, but in a difficult economic climate, increased online sophistication, increased competition and greater digital complexity, meaningful digital solutions go beyond an iPhone app and Facebook.
A serendipitous find this morning generated this video clip from “Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner”, which highlights some of the problems around consulting consumers (and internal stakeholders) on the direction of innovation.
