Recruiting and Participant Engagement: Part 1: Acquire: Q & A with Elizabeth MacLaughlin

Posted January 23rd 2012 by Elizabeth MacLaughlin

Attendees in our recent Mini Webinar about acquiring the right participants for Online Immersive Studies (click here for a link to the recording and presentation) had so many terrific questions that we didn’t get to answering all of them. Here are some follow up answers:

Q: Do you have a formula for over recruiting?

A: In general, we recommend over-recruiting by 18-20%. For harder to engage groups, 22-25% may be appropriate.

Q: Thinking of doing a "get to know" you question to eliminate those respondents not right for study. How many would you over recruit to do this?

A: Depending on your budget, an audition activity can be over-recruited 50-75%...or even up to twice as many as you’ll pick… so that you can both account for no-shows and pick the best participants for your study. Just remember to account for a small incentive (we recommend around $25) for dismissals, as well as any costs your recruit partners may have for recruiting for the entire group (not just the finalists).

Also remember to keep the overall number reasonable enough that you won’t be overwhelmed in choosing your final group. Ideally, your participants have 1-2 days (24-48 hours) to complete the audition activity, and then you’ll want to budget another day after that to make your final decisions, and let everyone know.

Q: Do you have experience with international research/inviting people from different nationalities?

A: Revelation supports multilingual projects in 16 languages, enabling researchers to conduct in-depth immersive studies simultaneously around the world, reaching over 3 billion potential customers!

Revelation currently supports English, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, Thai, Korean, Bahasa Malay, Spanish (EU and Latin American), Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Russian and Italian. Revelation offers a suite of translation services for all aspects of the study. For more information on the languages feature or our translation services, contact us.

Q: ­How can you vet technology aptitude and agreement to participate if you are using a 3rd party panel? What questions can you ask to narrow the sample to the correct respondent pool?

A: For Immersive studies, with 3^rd party panels you’ll still want to run a recruit so that you can pre-screen your final group for both technology requirements, willingness to participate, and any targeting requirements you have of your group.

Once they’ve qualified during your recruit phase, only then do they enter your immersive study.

Q: ­Any best practices when recruiting Business Participants?

A: B2B can be a very exciting prospect for Immersive work! Just keep in mind that various professions will require higher incentivizing for any type of research work, and that targeting busy professionals often means there will be work in designing a study that is easy and convenient for them to engage with.

There will be more to come on Tuesday, January 31^st at Part 2 of this Mini Webinar Series: all about Engaging and Retaining participants in online work. I hope to see you there! To register, click here.

Hello 2012! Five MR trends to watch in the coming year!

Posted January 3rd 2012 by Steve August

Well, here we are at the beginning of 2012. 2011, with all of its twists and turns, is behind us and we start the New Year looking ahead to see what might be in store. Here at Revelation, 2011 was a wonderful year of progress, challenge and growth. We see 2012 filled with immense opportunity. The wonderful thing about working in a dynamic, rapidly changing industry like market research is that each day represents a new opportunity to learn and find exciting new ways to create value for our customers. 

So as we look forward into 2012, here are some of the things we are keeping an eye on:

1.    Technology continues to reshape MR

No doubt about it, technology will continue to have an immense impact on MR, on both methodology and the business of MR itself. Technology enabled offerings will be the price of admission to stay current in the business, and more technology companies (especially around big data, marketing automation and mobile) will enter the market research space.

2.    Hype versus reality

That said, technology is not methodology in itself, and new technology-enabled methods will need to prove out against methods that have been normalized over the past decades. In 2012, researchers and clients will be putting social media research, gamification and other buzz-y methods to the test. 

3.    Lighter weight engagement at key moments

Given that the attention span of potential MR participants for MR activity is constant shrinking, and more MR moves to the less expressive mobile medium, lightweight collection methods that engages quickly at key moments will become more widespread. Getting the right question to the right person at the right time will start to take on as much importance as the depth of information.

4.    Delivering more value

We are not out of the economic woods yet by any means, and that means that budgets will continue to be tightened and a premium will be placed on delivering value. Ultimately the mission of market research is to understand people to answer business questions, and getting that mission accomplished faster, more cost effectively and just as reliably  (if not more so) will continue to be a huge imperative.  New methods, no matter how flashy, will be measured by how effectively they enable clients to get the answers they need.

 5.    Watch for new business models

While all the attention is on technology and methods, there is an undercurrent of disruption of current MR business models (for example, Usamp not charging for SurveyWriter to enable sample and other forms of revenue). Which traditional models will come under stress from a confluence of methodology and technology is yet to be seen, but inevitably, there will be a leap from applying technology to current methods and models to technology enabling new MR business models. 

Here is to a great 2012! To learn more about Revelation’s Immersive Research, we have a few options for you:

• Webinars
• Resources
• Demo

January Mini Webinar Series: Acquiring, Engaging and Retaining Research Participants

Posted January 3rd 2012 by Kristie Conner

One of the consistent messages we hear from our clients after they complete an Immersive Research study with Revelation is how engaged their participants were in the research and the amount of data they gathered.  In January, we are hosting two Mini Webinars that will highlight best practices for recruitment and participant engagement. The two part series will highlight Acquiring, Engaging and Retaining participants throughout the research study.

Recruiting and Participant Engagement: Part 1: Acquire

Revelation’s Client Services team has helped hundreds of our clients engage their participants in online Immersive Research studies that span days, weeks and sometimes even months!  How do we do it?  Join us, January 17, 2012, and learn about our three-pronged approach: Acquire, Engage, Retain. 

Participant Engagement: Part 2: Engage. Retain.

Part 1, Elizabeth discussed Acquire: how to run successful recruits for online Immersive Research studies.  On January 31, 2012, Elizabeth MacLaughlin will expand on the first webinar and discuss the second and third ingredients that get you the excited, engaged group you want!

Engage: How do you inspire your group to get excited about your online research study the minute they login? And, how do you connect with them online to strengthen their bond and commitment to the study? There are a few easy techniques you can employ during the first few days of your study that will go miles towards keeping your group operating at 100% throughout your study.

Retain: Your participants are off to a great start, but what now? How do you use Revelation to track your participants’ progress, and how and when is it appropriate to follow-up with your individual participants? What motivators will see them through from Day 1 to End?

To learn more or register click here.

Best Practices for Mobile Research: Q & A with Elizabeth MacLaughlin

Posted December 6th 2011 by Elizabeth MacLaughlin

All About Revelation Mobile

By: Elizabeth MacLaughlin, Client Services Manager

I recently hosted a mini-webinar to demonstrate the functionality of our Revelation Mobile App and discuss best practices in using mobile technology to capture in-the-moment data.

Here is a link to the recorded webinar and a PDF of the presentation, please click here.

Also, don't miss out on the follow-up webinar: Revelation Mobile Case Study. Click here to view the recording or download the presentation.

There were so many great questions that a few of them didn’t get answered. So, I put together the following Q&A series:

A: The Revelation App currently is supported on:

• iPhone Apple iOS 3.1.3 or later

• Android 1.6 (Donut) or later

• iPad 1 and 2 (keep in mind that iPad 1 does not have photo-taking capability)

Other mobile smartphone and tablet devices are not yet supported.

A: Currently, if a text pops up while the participant is in the middle of answering an activity on their Mobile device, they can either continue the activity and finish (submit) it before looking at their text…or they can click away from the Revelation App to view their text (or answer their phone, or anything else that might distract them from their in-the-moment responses), in which case their responses will be lost when they return to the Revelation App.

This is why we recommend structuring mobile activities to be short, and recurring. That way the activity is continually available to the participant so they can easily return to it and answer questions, and if they do happen to lose a few responses, they can re-enter data quickly and easily.

A: Revelation Mobile functions as an asynchronous tool, and researcher follow-up probes only show up on the desktop interface. Therefore there will be some time between the participant responds to his/her in-the-moment activity and when they see and respond to follow-up probes.

Utilizing the “Record, then Reflect” Immersive practice is most effective for our tool, which allows participants to capture their in-the-moment documentaries on their mobile device with short texts and photo responses, and then to elaborate later from home with more reflective detail.

A: On the Revelation Platform, the participant must first login to the online study from their desktop and create a password. Only after doing so are they able to use the Revelation App to access their Mobile activities. So to some extent, a desktop is currently required.

In addition, there are currently certain functionalities, such as ability to see and respond to probes; and certain activity types, such as an activity requesting video or a discussion activity, that are only available using a desktop computer.

On the whole, layering mobile activities in with non-mobile activities provides more rich data. However, if your goal is to run a study to collect primarily short, in the moment, response capture, you can certainly tailor a study that guides participants to primarily use their mobile devices to enter data. Just keep in mind that they potentially can respond to questions from their desktop as well, so setting participant study guidelines will be paramount.

A: Certainly! Our example for the webinar was a consumer shopping experience study, but one could use the same methods to capture B2B data, such as in the moment feedback from a tradeshow, conference or marketing event.

Thoughts from The Market Research Event

Posted November 9th 2011 by Steve August

Thoughts from The Market Research Event

During the past few days, I had the pleasure of attending The Market Research Event in Orlando. It was wonderful to meet so many of Revelation's customers, and vendors in person, as well as many friends and colleagues. 

For those who have never attended TMRE , it can be a little overwhelming.  There are nine (yes, nine!) concurrent tracks over the course of nearly three days.  It’s impossible for any one person to see everything and inevitably there are sessions you want to attend that happen during the same time slot.

The event has only just finished up, but I’ve collected some of my high level takeaways:

1.     From hype to reality - social media research is getting tested by end clients.

There were several presentations featuring end clients (Intel, Coleman) who have jumped into the social media research pool to see if it lived up to the hype and where it fit into the market research tool kit.  The sense I got from the presentations is that the verdict is still out.  On one hand it’s clear that SMR has value and can’t be ignored. On the other hand, specific applications, research norms and a realistic sense of time and effort required to get good results are part of the learning curve that end users are still climbing.

2.   Innovation – not just the technology, but also business models

The idea and need for innovation permeated many of the sessions.  There were presentations that dealt with market research technology and services, but I believe there is also starting to be some innovation around how market research fits into other business models. For example uSamp released a new DIY survey tool that’s totally free, and is essentially a driver for sample usage.  As it scales, it also gives them a huge database of business contacts to potentially leverage in other ways.  Google is playing with the idea of using micro-surveys as ‘pay-gates’ to premium content.   In these cases money is not being made on the research itself, but enabling other revenue streams.   It’s still VERY early days, but MR being integrated into other business models warrants keeping an eye on.

3.   Things that were new three years ago are still new to a lot of people

While so many of the presentations presented forward looking technologies and methodologies, the MR industry still moves very slow in adoption of new things into mainstream practice. Ultimately new techniques and methods need to prove out and prove value.   In the MR world, that takes time.

Revelation's customers are out in force at The Market Research Event (TMRE)

Posted November 6th 2011 by Steve August

We are so proud! Revelation’s customers are out in force at The Market Research Event.  This week a number of our customers will be presenting. Of course, while the achievements of our customers are their own, we can’t help but feel a bit of pride in supporting their success.

If you are attending The Market Research Event (TMRE), please consider attending the following sessions in support of our customers.

Monday, 11/7 at 2:15
Illumination Research presents American Woman: A Deep Dive into Segmentation

Monday, 11/7 at 1:30pm
KL Communication presents The iPad is Changing the Way Americans Consume Media: Learning from the Time Inc. Innovation Panel

Tuesday 11/8 at 1:30pm
C+R Research presents Teens and Their Money: A Deep Immersion into Teen Spending Behaviors Using Social Media Research Technology

Tuesday 11/8 at 1:30pm
Nicole Freund of Coleman Outdoor presents Succeeding as a One-Wo/Man Army: Creating Value When You Are the Only Resource

Tuesday, 11/8 at 2:15pm
Stephanie Balderrama of Consumers Insights Group presents Creating a Brand Defining Presence in Unfamiliar Territory

Tuesday, 11/8 at 3:00pm
Dave Lundahl of Insights Now presents Breakthrough Product Innovation through Behavior-Driven Research

Congratulations to all of these amazing research companies!

The Market Research Event

Posted October 31st 2011 by Kristie Conner

Next week Revelation, Inc. is attending The Market Research Event in Orlando, Florida!  Personally, this will be my first market research conference and I am looking forward to the overall experience.   We’ll have a booth (#116 – please be sure you stop by) and in between booth duty I’ll be attending some of the sessions.  I’m especially looking forward to:

• Jerry W. Thomas, President/CEO “The Future is Coming: Macro Economic Trends That Will Shape Consumer Behavior”
• Nicole Freund of Coleman, “Succeeding as a One-Wo/Man Army: Creating Value When You Are the Only Resource”
• Nick Mysore, “Trend Spotting with Social Media to Grow Your Business”
• Mary Egan, Starbucks Coffee Company, “Consumer Insight at a Source of Corporate Advantage”
• Jeremy Gutsche, Founder of Trendhunter.com, “The Trend Report: Clusters of Innovation”
• “How Constant Contact Uses Insight to Evolve With Our Customers

Meegan, Senior Account Manager picks:

• Eric Grosgogeat of Focus Vision Worldwide, and Jorge Calvachi, Amway, “How to Develop a Concept Across Two Continents in One Day?”
• Nicole Freund of Coleman, “Succeeding as a One-Wo/Man Army: Creating Value When You Are the Only Resource”

Rachel, Director of Client Services picks:

• “Experience Driven Innovation”, Intel Corporation
• “Revolutionizing Your Brand Research”, Harris Interactive
• “Social Media Meets Community Panels: All Those Comments Are Just Noise Until You Know Who They Are”, Vision Critical & Partner
• “Demonstrating the ROI of Market Research”, Interactive Discussion
•  “Beyond Ethnography: Creating a Culture Committed to Consumer Empathy”, Paulette Kish, Mars Petcare
• Nicole Freund of Coleman, “Succeeding as a One-Wo/Man Army: Creating Value When You Are the Only Resource”

During the event you’ll be able to find me or one of the other Revelation team members – Meegan Thye-Walker or Rachel Bell at our booth, in a session or mingling. If you’d like to meet with any of the above or Steve August, CEO, just ping me at Kristie@revelationglobal.com or via Twitter @k_conner.

For those of you who stop by our booth we’ll not only have valuable information to share on Immersive Research, but a special surprise!

See you next week or follow us on Twitter to follow the TMRE activities.

• @revelationinc
• @k_conner
• @ rachel_bell44



How Steve Jobs Helped Create Revelation

Posted October 12th 2011 by Steve August

There has been quite a bit of sadness around the Revelation office since the news of Steve Jobs’ passing. We are a company of Apple fan boys and girls, and our office is a veritable showroom of Apple stuff – iMacs, iPhones, and iPads. And yet, the rows of sleek, immaculately designed devices on our desks represent only the most superficial impact that Steve Jobs has had on Revelation.

In fact, it could be argued that Revelation may very well not be here today without Steve Jobs’ influence. When I founded Revelation, my goal was for us to be the Apple of the market research business. I wanted to create a business that not only helped researchers understand consumers, but also offered a new kind of research experience.

I looked to Apple as our model. Beyond shiny surfaces and elegant interfaces, Apple embraced the notion that the whole experience had to be considered. The iPod had iTunes and access to the music and content and it all worked together seamlessly. The iPhone had apps and the App Store so you could make your phone do all kinds of useful things. (And of course, if you desired, useless but entertaining things.)

For Revelation, the idea was to not just create a piece of software, but to look at the whole process of going from business questions, to insight, to understanding. At Revelation, we looked not just at technology, but we also developed an activity-based approach that would get the most out of the technology and the online medium. The confluence of the two became Immersive Research.

Steve Jobs said that Apple lived at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. I believe that qualitative market research lives at the intersection of the liberal arts and business. And we’ve always thought of Revelation living at the intersection of technology and market research.

When we started Revelation, we had no idea how immensely challenging it is to become ‘the Apple’ of anything. While we are proud of what Revelation has accomplished, we know we are still only at the very beginning, striving to that elusive ideal.

Beyond all the shiny devices, that’s the biggest impact Steve Jobs has had on Revelation -- the idea that having ideals in our work is important, and there is nothing more worthy of effort in our lives than working vigorously towards them.

And for that we thank you, Steve. You will be missed.

Surprise! More Data Than You Expect!

Posted September 7th 2011 by Steve August

One of the consistent things we hear at Revelation is a sense of surprise about how much data a Revelation-based project can generate. It seems new customers, who are more familiar with focus groups, are often most surprised by the amount of information their participants can generate within only a few days.

So why do Revelation Project studies generate such an unexpected treasure trove of information? There are two reasons that work together to produce so much data: the amount of active participation time and the nature of the activity-based approach. 

Let’s talk about participation time first. This is just a simple case of math. Compared to in-person focus groups, participants in a Revelation-based study spend a lot more time actively participating. Howard Zaltman in his book “How Customers Think” estimated that the average focus group member actually only actively participates – the time they are speaking - for 7 minutes. Think about it – a focus group participant may contribute a total of two hours to a focus group. But in a room with ten people and a moderator, they have only a limited amount of time they can actively contribute. 

In a five-day Revelation study, for roughly the same recruiting and incentive cost as a focus group, participants often actively participate for 20 minutes per day. Over the course of the study that can add up to 100+ minutes, nearly two hours of active participation. The huge difference in active participation time adds up to more data over the course of the study.

After active participation time, the nature of an activity-based approach is the second factor in Revelation-based studies producing a surprising amount of data. Activities elicit participant responses by creating opportunities to express beyond just answering questions. Let’s take, as an example, a photo metaphor exercise where participants are asked to post three images and descriptions to represent three different brands. With 15 participants, the total number of photos posted would be 45 images and accompanying descriptions, 15 for each brand. That is just one activity in  a series of many more activities over the course of a week. Add a video activity for 15 participants that solicit two video clips of two minutes from each participant. This would generate 30 video clips and an hour of video to watch and analyze.

As you can see it starts to quickly add up! In just two activities, participants have generated 45 photos and texts from the metaphor activity and 30 video clips from the video activity!

The great thing about this is that recruiting and incentives are about the same for Revelation Project studies versus traditional focus groups, which means that you are getting a lot more contribution from each participant – and more data – for your research dollar.

To learn more download our new white paper Cost Effectiveness Comparison: Immersive Research™ Compared to Traditional Qualitative Research Methods.”

Blended Reality ResearchTM: Q & A with Karen Ward from Curiosity Inc.

Posted August 24th 2011 by Kristie Conner

We had a tremendous response to our Blended Reality Research^TM (BRR) webinar and wanted to follow up on some of the questions that we didn’t get a chance to explore and answer during the Great Research Thinking webinar hosted by Revelation in July.

Q: What do you learn from the face-to-face ethnography as compared to the online study?

A: We find Immersive Research – an online, activity-based approach  really useful to get a deep understanding of how people feel and think about a particular topic.  Because we spend more time with them, they have time to reflect on their own attitudes, behaviours and ideas, often coming to interesting and insightful revelations on their own.  Online platforms are also fantastic for learning about something that takes place over time – days, weeks, months - which is very expensive to replicate using ethnography.

In our work, we spend a lot of time thinking about user journeys and systems of interactions and connection points and we still find it difficult to get a clear read on this using online platforms only.  Participants can only report and document behavior that they’re aware of so it’s incredibly helpful to be able to watch them complete a set of tasks.  We usually start this learning online and deepen it when we’re in the field.

Q: Were the experts you spoke to during the BRR project case study you presented engaged in person, online or over the phone?

A: When we engage experts to help stimulate our own thinking, we engage them in whatever way is most convenient for them.  Some we spoke to by phone or Skype and others we met in person.  We don’t usually engage experts using online platforms as they have very limited time to spend with us and we tend to get the best insight from them when we’re engaged directly in conversation and/or show + tell.

Q: How do you manage/mine the tremendous amount of data generated from multiple weeks online followed by ethnographic fieldwork?

A: When we first started using online research tools, we definitely made the “more is more” mistake.  We still battle this on every project because we’re a curious bunch and it’s so easy to ask more, add one more activity tack on a few more days to explore this really interesting bit…

But in most cases more isn’t more, it’s just more.  So, we’re really rigorous in our project and research design and think about how we’re going to analyze the data generated by each phase, activity and question from the outset.  We also schedule analysis and downloading time throughout the project so we’re thinking with the data as we go, rather than have it to pile up to be dug into and dealt with at the end.  This can be very overwhelming.

And although we’re really rigorous about our project and research design, we do build in time and budget for what we call “rabbit holes”.  You just never know what surprises are lurking about on discovery-based projects and it’s important for us to have the time and means to explore the unexpected.  This is often where the juiciest insights and opportunities lie waiting.

Q: You talked about posting content from the digital environment to your physical project space.  Do/how do you package this as a deliverable for your clients?

A: The content and artifacts that find their way into our physical project space aren’t packaged as a deliverable for clients per se.  However, we do design the project space and populate it so that we can use the contents as stimulus for some of the divergent thinking and co-creation work we do with clients at different stages of the project.  It’s also incredibly helpful for the project team to be “steeped” in the data throughout the project.  It’s critical for pattern recognition, collaborative thinking and concept development.

Q: You could spend endless time analyzing all of this data.  How do you know when it’s time to stop analyzing and start synthesizing and reporting? 

A: Truthfully, it’s usually the project timeline that dictates when we stop!  We schedule analysis time throughout the project and our analysis/synthesis is quite iterative.  When it feels like that iterative process isn’t generating new insights and ideas, we know we’re ready to move onto reporting or concept/prototype development.

Q: To what extent do your clients participate in reviewing and commenting on the raw data?  Do they have an appetite for this level of engagement in the data?

A: We actually insist that our clients dig into some of the raw data with us and build this into the project design.  They usually do this in a few ways…

(1) We strongly encourage clients to do some reading while we’re online.  In our experience, the client teams that get the most out of BRR actively schedule reading time throughout the online study;

(2) We strongly encourage them to come in the field with us; and

(3) We immerse them in curated data when they join us in our project space for ideation and collaboration work sessions.  We design these sessions so they have time to browse and interact with the data so we can use it to think and create together.

Q: Have you found that clients want to eliminate face-to-face “in-context” time with online research?

A: