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How to make the most of mobile qualitative apps

How to make the most of mobile qualitative apps

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I love that the world has moved on from just doing stuffy old group discussions, to also doing more in-the-moment insight methods.

It’s great to be able to give respondents an app and get them to record Dad beached on the sofa at home, and the dog snacking on the kids’ lunchbox food.

But this in-the-moment insight is a slippery thing. It’s more demanding than processing a few hours of group discussions and turning them into a coherent story. Our new ‘data’ doesn’t feel coherent; it’s rambling, and random and mundane. It’s hard to make sense of.

Seems like we’ve got new material to play with, but do we have to tools to chisel away at all that ‘data’ and make a story that really inspires and delivers commercial insight? And how do you chisel away at a slippery thing?

1. From Respondent to Participant

First it’s important to recognise what you’ve done to a respondent by asking them to take part in a project where they record information about their lives and what’s going on in it.
You have turned them from a respondent into a participant.
They are more consciously collecting information about themselves and choosing what to show and what to tell.

OK, in groups respondents still decide what to reveal and what to withhold, but this is different, because in order for you to get the data you need, you have to brief the participant to give you want you want, and then you need to release them to ‘go get’.

When they understand better what you are after, when they participate in the project, then you get better data.

Here’s how you get great participation:

  • You brief them. You show them how to use the app you’ve given them. Give them a tutorial to follow, get them to try out a sample question or task. Make life as easy as possible for them so that when they are recording moments in their everyday life, it feels seamless, easy…

But more.

  • You tutor them. You let them in on the idea that you want to see what’s going on in their lives, you help them understand what your objectives are. Not the insight objectives, but the information objectives that will lead to insight. I want to understand how you and your family really snack so I can help my client…

  • Tutoring Self-reflection… You help them realise that the mundane decisions we make in life, like ‘what should I have, cheese or ham?’ are the decisions we want to capture. Before the project starts, you teach them how to be more self-reflective, how to notice the little things that are going on, and how to access the inner world that is contributing to these thoughts too. It’s worth teaching respondents ‘thinking aloud’ techniques so that they can record what’s going on in their mind whilst they are recording their behaviour. Helping respondents play around with mindfulness techniques too means they will be better equipped to see what’s going on in their inner world.
  • You motivate them. There are lots of ways to motivate people. Here’s how Qual Street does it
    1. We give prizes. So if there are 12 people recording their behaviour on a ‘my workplace’ project, we offer a prize of up to £100 for the best outputs. And making the process competitive isn’t just about the money, it’s about winning…
    2. We give constant feedback. We’re reading responses and commenting on them as they come in, or as near as damnit, which means being a 24/7 researcher
    3. We let them see each other’s stuff. Participants can be inspired by what other people are doing and saying. In the best of worlds, we can get close to what you get in a great group discussion, one thought leading to another, which in turn leads to a memory recalled…which creates a conversation
  • You reflect with them. At the end of the project we ask participants to think about what they’ve learned, the insight they’ve got about themselves. (It’s an important part of the closing down process). In the best projects, this means visiting with participants too, or reconvening them into a group, and going through their outputs face to face so that you can deep dive with them into the data. This turns lot of information that’s floating on the surface into something more profound, useful and insightful, because you are exploring the meaning of their experience.

2. Turning Data into Meaning

I have a phrase running around in my head: this is where the magic happens. It’s always been hard to describe how to turn qualitative data: what you’ve heard, seen and thought about, into insight because mainly it’s been about thinking, formulating ideas, thinking about if these ideas are good, and then re-thinking until everything seems to make sense.

With mobile app work however you get so much stuff, and it seems so random that just thinking about it isn’t really good enough. You have to organise the data…

Here are some of the ways you can do this…

  • Analysis Grids. Old-school style, set up a grid, organise respondents into key groupings, (Y axis) and organise key questions and issues across the top (x axis), read through your data and populate your grid. See what comes out.
  • Insight Questions. Ask a more profound, or behaviour change question. If you are studying snacking maybe the question would be: “what does my client need to change about their snack to fit in with real snacking behaviour”. Hold that thought and read through the data, then answer the question and repeat with another question until you’ve got some real insight.
  • Systematise. Read everyone’s ‘day one’ diary data together and write down emerging themes. Read every response from all the women, and write down emerging themes. Then read responses from everyone in the North. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
  • Return to the Participants. If you do all of the above, you are going to have some follow-on questions that you now want to ask your participants.
    So… don’t do all your analysis when it’s over, do it in the middle and towards the end of the project so that you can ask key questions as they occur to you. Deeper questions are unlikely to ‘ping’ whilst respondents are recording their behaviour because you are monitoring their responses at quite a superficial level. You need to get into the data, to dive in, before these bigger, more profound, questions emerge.
  • Give yourself space and time to think. This stuff isn’t easy. Figuring out the meaning of all this information is usually harder than the stuff you get out of group discussions because it doesn’t feel so coherent or clear-cut. Be reassured by that. Confusion and muddle is closer to real life than nice, neat answers. When things feel neat it doesn’t necessarily make them real or useful, just nice and neat, which is less demanding on our poor old brains, which of course our brains like.

So you need to give yourself time to process. You need to go through the data and then let it sink in. You need to think hard and review the data, and then let that sink in. You can’t be also running some more groups and writing a proposal and setting up another project. You need to block out and protect time to think.

3. Conclusions

These mobile apps are amazing. They allow us to see into the lives of consumers and they help
consumers see their lives reflected back too.
Mobile apps mean we can be better researchers.

However, to get real insight from them we need to know how to be good researchers in the first place. We need to spend time and effort on our respondents/ participants.

We need to ask the right questions and we need to reflect intelligently on the answers we are being gifted by them too.

Why not check out the Qual Street website for more free thinking on Qualitative Research or Call Kath on 07738 180529.

kath-handonheart

Kath Rhodes, Qual Street Owner

I love love learning and so I invest time and resources with Ambreen and Claire into exploring social psychology, neuro science, creativity and new techniques in research. Read all about it and help yourself to the ideas that will deliver your business the insight it needs

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