furtherandfaster

Load of rubbish?

Today I was running the building strong propositions course for the IDM for the 9th time now. Vanetha one of the students had what I consider to be a brilliant idea. Now that recycling has taken hold in many places of the UK, people are being forced to sort their rubbish into cans, paper, bottles, plastic containers and so on. And place it sorted on the street. Surely there has never been a better or easier time to launch a dustbin audit of a random sample of this material - it would take seconds and its all there on the street!

quick and dirty research with lofi tools - the mobile

I put a film together this week. Based on a visit to a town on the Bulgarian border. We were doing some observation training - some store checks and some street interviews. What made the exercise interesting was that all of the material came from my mobile phone. I had a DVCam with me and an audio recorder but chose to use the mobile. The results didn't have high production values but were perfectly usable and editable.

I needed to make a short intro film of myself for a course I have to run. Turn to the DV cam ? Nope - just use a snap away digital camera - 2 minutes footage - memory stick into the computer and ftp it up to the relevant website. Digital media is getting ridiculously easy to use. The only reason you're not already using it is because you haven't worked out how to do it yet. I've got hifi gear but increasingly I'm thinking lofi - because I always have lofi gear with me.  So I'm putting a course together on the topic. If you're interested - mail me and tell me.

You got the power (not!) client disclosure

Yesterday I penned a guest editorial for the International Journal of Market Research asking some hard questions about respondent anonymity - it should be published in the next couple of months. In the course of which I discovered something which I found rather disturbing.  The new Market Research Society code which all researchers are supposed to abide by makes clear provisions for the anonymity of respondents to be protected. What I had not noticed is that there is no requirement for respondents to be told the identity of the client who after all is paying for the whole exercise, and who will we hope profit from it. I have always told respondents the name of the client - if it isn't already blindingly obvious- there is usually a pleasing shift of perceptions when moving from unbranded to branded which is very useful for the researcher.  But it is a courtesy not a requirement.

There is a curious anomaly that if the client is observing the group and their presence is likely to be prejudicial to a respondent then the respondent should be informed. And respondents have the option of withdrawing at any point.   But this puts the onus on the client observer to inform the researcher that they know the respondent - giving the respondent the opportunity to leave.

This balance of power is archaic, woefully out of step with the reality of empowered vigilante customers who take a poor view of companies which do their best to avoid public scrutiny. Surely it is time for market research to clean up its act and to make it mandatory for the paymasters to reveal to research participants who they are whether they like it or not.

Debrief with a difference

I have to blog this - cos this is NEVER going to happen again. Debrief 3 bishops (and an archdeacon) of the Church of England in Christchurch College Oxford. If God had meant us to drive cars he would never have created Oxford. Parking was a nightmare after a 2.5 hour journey there was nowhere to park more than 2 hours at the outside. Once I got in with laptop and projector I got to the second problem - panelled wood - so nowhere to project - so we had to move to another room and take pictures off the walls in order to do the presentation. At which point the laptop cable started to misbehave turning the screen to a lurid yellow glow. And the screen didn't reformat properly throwing half the text off - but there was no time to fix it. The project involved 4 separate pieces of research method - the summary ran to 85 slides and I was asked to summarise these in half an hour to allow time for questions, discussion and decision making.  The miracle was that I managed to keep the talky bit to 30 minutes (ex-agency boys/tricks of the trade eh?)  Debriefs are funny things - if you start from the decision that needs to be taken - actually a lot less needs delivering. You need the credentials of the researchers, you need to understand a bit about the method - but the rest is really options and decision support. Which is a lot less than 85 slides. It was a lot better meeting for the debrief part being half an hour and by letting the decision making breathe actually it felt like more time passed than really had. We got feedback from all of the 8 people in the meeting.

The last thing to say was that the screen played a supporting role - it endorsed (in yellow) what I was saying rather than me glossing findings on the screen. Hope I have the fear/prudence/discipline to be that ruthless again. Bet I don't.

thinking about insight

I've been working on a presentation about insight which has allowed me to develop my thinking that Insight is the difference between the way that a client looks at the market and the way a customer thinks of the market. What I haven't enough physics to work out is whether the difference between the two is a metaphor about stereoscopy or one about diffraction - the way light is diffracted when it moves into another medium. Any suggestions from roving physicists out there?

Focus groups the size of an airbus

Back on the plane I read another article in Wired. This time about Netflix attempts to improve the mathematical algorithm of their film recommendation service. It was an open competition but an obscure Brit called Gavin Potter has leapfrogged into the top of the listings alongside teams of postgrads from Princeton because he had taken a very different approach. Instead of trying to improve the grunt of the algorithm he had applied psychology to it. An example is that when you assign 5 scores on the trot you give different scores to if you had scored the films on 5 separate occasions. These psychological approximations were what was giving his method its particular power. This is a good example of the kind of program we are going to need for the next generation of focus groups. At the moment qualitative research is restricted to groups of 6-8 people because qualititative researchers can't cope with any more complexity in the dataset. In future I envisage focus groups as big as the complement of an airbus with a team of 4 researchers, 2 analysts and a raft of AI programs in support. 

Thursday Web 2.0 online research training

5 hours sleep – which felt like a lot after the previous night – I got up at 6 to work up my materials (4am UK time) The course was a difficult one to describe it turned out. Web 2.0 was in the title – a huge draw since in Romania the latest thing always has huge interest even if the latest thing from Western Europe  may be largely inapplicable to the Romanian situation. I did a balancing act working through some of the latest case studies in UK online research while trying to work out what technical level Romania has actually got to.  It turned out there were hardly any digital planners there and a group of bemused media planners who patiently waited all day for me to get on to web surveys and web analytics. From the questions of this group it became evident that they wanted to use the web for broadcast push and targeting – a very web 1.0 approach. But there were also clients present who were interested in online panels and the casestudies from Virtual Surveys and in particular the mobile based tracking system being pioneered by Fiona Blades at Mesh Research.

Research Liberation Front Round 2

By the time I had finished the debrief from the previous night's groups it was time for the Research Liberation Front the second year we had run a fringe event alongside the Market Research Conference. The conference is in London close to the MI5 building so lots of tie ins on the website and facebook about espionage.  The main contributions to the evening was rants lasting 5 minutes. It was a good evening well attended and the attendees included some of our most distinguished researchers in the UK. In retrospect we had too much material for the time – a dangerous sign. One of the reasons for having a fringe event is to make a point about the earnestness of the main conference. A little alarming to appear quite so earnest ourselves after only 2 years of playing the court jester. Highlights included Chris Forrest’s rant that conference should be about partying and networking and that London was far too serious a venue, Richard Sheldrake’s scatological assault on internet research (with the best and rudest put down of the evening involving the honour of the heckler’s daughter who he had been imprudent enough to bring) , and lastly John Kearon of Brainjuicer’s robust assault on the ability of brainstorms  to generate and revive bad ideas endlessly. I was responsible for filming the event – look out for the vids on Youtube. I also played not so glamorous assistant to Mike Imms explanation that a research insight is rather like a kaleidoscope. He talked while I arranged the audience into a living kaleidscope throwing coloured balls at each other while someone with a torch created reflections in 3 large mirrors – you had to be there to appreciate it! Lots of friends to catch up with and with the Romanian trip looming there was time for heads-up with Chris Forrest and Mark Earls both of whom have run courses in Romania.

Research on the Bulgarian border

A day of research training at GMP – we worked solidly through the charts I had prepared.  Then in the afternoon we headed for Georghiu 40km to the south and close to the Bulgarian border – you could see the minarets of mosques in as we drove down.  And Teo and Mirela the planners pointed out to me the gypsy style of grand house – the architecture is different from that over to the East. We had travelled to Georghiu to do some basic field training exercises. We had two topics to research – beer and the up and coming national election to appoint local mayors. So in a couple of hours the plan was to do a couple of store checks in small food stores, talk to some locals and have a beer in a local bar to interview the locals to find out what beer they were drinking at home. Oh and who they wanted to vote in as mayor.  This was useful exercise for me – I have been wanted to design a quick and dirty (or messy – translates better in Romanian) research course focussed on practice rather than theory. It proved to be difficult to watch people in the stores – these are small and we were constantly being watched so an attempt to watch other people shopping would have created suspicion and potentially hostility.  After checking beer prices we retreated to the square to people watch. Kids were playing on skates and mobile phones were much in evidence even though the kids were 5-6 years of age.  We found out quickly that the mayor had an impressive track record – everyone we spoke to said they would vote for him.

As one woman explained – because of him I now have running water in my flat – before then we had an shared outside tap. And then a very interesting aside. The last mayor was honest but couldn’t get anything done. I don’t ask how this mayor makes his money because at least he does things for the community. Now not wishing to impugn the integrity of the local mayor it seemed rather interesting that an successful mayor was more likely to be crooked than not in the eyes of the electorate. And if the mayor got you running water in your flat for the first time – then wouldn’t you vote him in again?

In the bar we watched drinkers and their choice of beers. And asked a few about what they drank at home. It was a little alarming to discover that not many of those we spoke to were aware of having seen any advertising at all. Leaving the possibility that either it was targeted wrong – or was doing a great job only no one could remember having seen it! I attempted to use my mobile phone for the first time as the sole recording device – for audio recording, stills and video clips. It would be useful to be able to link mobiles to laptops to upload all this material and to have swift turnaround using a device which virtually everyone carries around with them. I will report back on the quality of the material I managed to capture.

Quick and Dirty Research Weekend

It occurred to me today that it would be a lot of fun to run a course to teach a range of field techniques including ethnography and bits of bricolage by taking a bunch of people to a slightly dodgy sea side resort and giving them research tasks to carry out around the sea front and web cafes. Is this idea a goer?  Is anybody out there interested? Everything done of course in the best POSSIBLE taste!

WARC online research conference

  I've been blogging the 2 day conference for WARC the last coupla days. Lovely work to be doing - this is an area where there is new thinking coming out all the time. And its fun to be right next to the track watching the horses streaming past. As ever it is very easy to collect material at an event like this - you walk in with a camera and a digital audio recorder - that's the easy part - its the editing and posting that takes the time. But point your browsers here and you can take a look. I can't blog from the actual event - I need to stand back and take a position I don't think you can do that on the fly - its kind of like story telling. You have to leave before you can tell the story.

Research Liberation Front

I set up the Facebook page for the RLF event happening on the 18th Tuesday evening while the Market Research Conference takes place on the 18th. Round the corner from the MI5 building. It is great fun to do and very easy - that's the great thing about having a host organism which doesn't know how to cope with irreverence and playfulness. Luckily market researchers include many irreverent and playful practitioners.  Researchers aren't all earnest honestly. Research wouldn't be as strong in this country if researchers were dull.  You can visit the website here for more details - or head for Facebook.

Web 2.0 conference MRS

Honestly - you pay to attend a conference then have only enough time to spend 90 minutes there - collect the book of presentations and go - but it was worth it. This is the 4th event I have attended this year on Internet Research - I have a course on online reasearch to write for early next year so I neeed to know my stuff and I need to know what casestudy material is available. Catriona Campbell was very good on usability and how to optimse websites with a range of usability techniques.  I caught up briefly with Mario Menti from GMI and talked about the use of 3rd party plug ins on Facebook as a research technique. Then it was time to run for the train. I had groups to do in the evening in St Albans.

What happened next

I had a meeting at Intercontinental hotels with Nick Barton who I hadn't seen since I had debriefed a European project on the future of Holiday Inns nearly 2 years ago. It was a hectic 6 week chase around Europe to do a 3 country study. And I met the Director of Marketing  and the new Director of Research and insight. It was a mutual catch up - I told them what I had been up to. And they told me what they had done with the research we had done for them.  This almost never happens and it is such a pleasure to find that a piece of work that has taken a chunk of one's life has been used well and repeatedly within an organisation. The new concept had even been put into a piece of print so I have a souvenir! Thoroughly satisfying. Full marks to them and can I urge every client reading this to do the same. It really gives the researchers the motivation to work even harder next time if they can be confident that their work will really make a difference.

Debriefs and how to make them better

I ran a session today for a pharmaceutical research agency on how to improve debrief presentations - it was a taster for a course I do with Mike Imms and Audrey Niven. Given how critical debriefs are it is ludicrous how encultured debriefs have become. We do them but we don't think about why we do what we do. Just a little thought is sufficient to make people realise that there really are lots of different ways of debriefing clients and most will be better than the default option we use most of the time. Powerpoint isn't the same as a written research report. Most debrief meetings play to the cleverness of the researcher not the decisions the client is going to have to make following the meeting.  It also gave me a chance to introduce the ideas from Beyond Bullets - great website by the way. But I would recommend you buy the whole book. I can't believe I haven't put it on the website yet - will do so very soon.

One of the most difficult issues about debriefing research I have discovered is that clients use research as social media - for improving their status in the host organisation whether or not the research is actually used!So what do you do - make the findings more shareable or press on to make them more decision friendly even if this isn't what most clients in the debrief want to use them for?

Tricky briefs

It had to happen - you position yourself as somone who can handle tricky research issues and the briefs get harder and harder. Today's really has given me pause for thought. How to optimise two response channels telephone and internet in how they work together. Very difficult but an entirely reasonable brief. People are working across mutiple channels. How they work in combination is actually much more important than how single comms channels function. But oh so difficult to pick the pieces apart.  I've retired to put my thinking cap on!

MRS Online research training

I managed to get myself onto the first day course the MRS has run about online qual. Run by Andrew Vincent of Waves and Graeme Lawrence and Peter Comley of Virtual Surveys.  This was a treat on 2 counts -  online research is such an emerging area that this is a rare opportunity to get despatches from the front - so it really was gold dust. The other rarity was their honesty. About what hadn't worked and where online qual was likely to go. It really is all up in the air. Full marks for their honesty as well. Wish there was more of it about. I am convinced that online research is going to change the way we think about carrying out reseach - it is very interesting watching the area develop. I was amused that last time I had seen Graeme present back in March he talked about online panels - this time he talked about resarch communities - which sounds much sexier!

Planning the revolution

There was a meet this evening of conspirators from the Research Liberation Front - remember the fringe event which we ran earlier this year at the Market Research Society conference. Well the race is on to do it again this coming year in London. There were lots of good ideas on the table. Expect more mayhem on March 18/19th. It turns out that several of those who came have also submitted papers for the conference so I anticipate chaos when various speakers from the conference platform try to strike postures in the pub around the corner where we will be holding the fringe event and talk about being marginalised. There's the alternative research scene for you. Naughty but nice.

a couple of dates for the diary

Submission date for the Market Research Society conference looms. If you've an idea for a paper then best to get on with it. Hmm - better get in a couple of suggestions meself. Stephen King event organised by the APG this coming Monday night. Only there's no ref on the website. You'll have to phone them for details. Now where was I?

Gardeners question time

It was a bit on the hoof - or should that be the welly boot? But I ended up researching two lots of gardeners today. And came away with the feeling that I wasn't asking them to find out what they thought but almost that we were spinning something together that was interesting all of us as it emerged. The creative material was OK but what came from the exchange was much richer.

How to do insight - course

Just to tip you off that I'm running a course on the 14th of September in London with Mike Imms entitled How to do Insight.  All about how to reduce the uncertainties of locating research insights. I've attached our promo piece about it if you're interested in coming. Download insightpromo.doc

Debrief summit Mk2

took place today and I have to say (with complete bias as a tutor) that I loved it and it was brilliant.  Mike Imms and Audrey Niven als train on it and its such a pleasure to work on - its like a group mind the way we all chip in. The two them do a presentatinos course but what is so good about this one is that it really gets you thinking about how to debrief differently and the alternatives to Powerpoint. I'm sure we'll run it again. And I'll be looking forward to it.  Next on the slate is writing a course with Mike for the autumn all about getting hold of insights and what exactly an insight is.

Internet Research

Getting very tired again. Tonight I was running for the second time this week - internet groups - a very different way of moderating but unusually rich in the data it throws up despite not having the benefits of face to face interaction. And fortunately for me the client was content to communicate via an independent channel rather than direct me over the phone.  Good stuff

Ginni Valentine crowned research revolutionary

Tonight there was an award ceremony for Ginni who had topped the poll as a research revolutionary. She was chuffed to bits having beaten off some stiff competition. As some one murmured to me as we gathered at the Edinburgh Castle in Camden - we've got royalty in tonight.  And so it proved. Wendy Gordon and Gill Ereaut spoke about the contribution Ginni has made to the market research industry. Fiona Blades presided over the ceremonies. When it was Ginni's turn to speak she said how much she had appreciated getting this kind of recognition unofficial as it was. She praised the idea behind the Set Reseach free fringe as the politicising of research which was long overdue. She also paid tribute to her marxist aunty who was still thinking radical thoughts in her mid 90s. It was a magic night.   

Researched out

I'm a little weary now having run a couple of groups every night since Tuesday and now its Friday morning. Its snowstorm time - that invaluable period when the data blows around in your head - only I have 2 projects snowstorming around and I'm mentally preparing a third for next week. We had a bit of drama last night - during the warm up for one of the groups I basically outed a couple of respondents who had come from a competitor so noting the body language of the client which was compelling - I chose my moment to stop everything and ask them to leave - I'd never noticed before how like a tea party a group can be and how unEnglish it is to ask people to leave - really not cricket - but we got over it and 10 minutes later the tea party was back in full swing.

Some musings on usability

There seems to have been a thread on usability running through my head this last 24 hrs. I had lunch with Beverly Clarke of Virgin Media at the Crazy Bear in Whitfield Street. So much to talk about and so little time - but it took me a good few minutes before I found said Crazy Bear because there were no signs. It turned out that the sign was on the floor outside of the restaurant. The maitre D said as if explaining to a stupid child - we don't put the sign in the usual place because we're the Crazy Bear. The loos there were an extravaganza with water cascading down the back of the urinals from ceiling height for dramatic effect - I daren't take a picture for fear of being arrested and you really wouldn't appreciate a picture of me urinating however glamorous the surroundings. But the loos were also hidden behind a secret door. They had a member of staff permanantly stationed to direct newbies like me.   Which got me pondering about how stupid - why not have signs like everyone else? The point is that if you decide you're going to take better care of your customers - you provide experiences which they are more likely to remember - when you know where the restaurant is and where the loos are the sign is largely redundant. Building a space for loyalists is a great idea. So I abandoned the idea of going of on a grumpy rant and gave credit where credit was due. Most client companies wouldn't dare.

And first thing Friday morning before I caught the train back from Manchester I was back with usability. This time with the Gideon's bible in my hotel room. Trying to design a standard interface to help newbies find their way into a 2000 year old book. Now that's a challenge. And faced with their tables of problems and links pages - I was left wondering whether they had got around to researching them at all.  There were links to citizenship and marriage (don't get divorced) It was bizarre in the extreme.  As an experienced user I couldn't get my head around this newbie interface and suspect that very few of them could get around it either. Though at 6am I was fresh out of ideas about how I could build a better one.

Mannequin Fun - video powered by Metacafe

I conclude with a piece of light relief. Is this brilliant usability - or is that guilt stricken - they made me do it furtively because there were no towels? Much more interesting than towels though..

Research debriefs or skimming stones if you will

Had a coffee or two and an inspirational confab with Audrey Niven today. One of the topics we touched on was that of debriefing research - very relevant as on July 6th we are with Mike Imms running the Debrief Summit for the second time. Its a whole day thinking about debriefing research why we do it and how to make it better.  One of the images Audrey and I dreamed up was the image of skimming stones. When you flick a stone into a lake - you instinctively try to get it to jump. When we debrief research we should similarly count the skips. How many times does the research get accessed and reference after the debrief? What does it really change inside the company? And how can we vary our technique to get more skips? I hadn't intended to turn this into a plug but if you're interested in coming to the Debrief Summit then mail me and I can pass your details onto Mike.