Modern qualitative

Web Design: 20 Hottest Trends To Watch Out For in 2013

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:01:00 +0100

Web Design: 20 Hottest Trends To Watch Out For in 2013:

All throughout 2012 there has been an enormous surge in new web design trends. Some of you may remember my earlier post on web design trends going into 2012. Now we can see many of these ideas have come to fruition, and even adopted further increasing levels of novelty. In … Continue reading »

Are we there yet?

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:15:00 +0100

I usually rattle on about market research, or Millennial or communities, but I thought I’d write about the light-hearted subject of time this evening ;-)

As a fallout from the Mayan Prophesy I’ve seen quite a few articles trying to make sense of where we are in history. “We’ve gone from being a society speculating about the future to actually being in the future”, so says Rushkoff. “The Millennium came and we suddenly realised we were in the future. Maybe that’s what the Mayans were indicating”.

At the end of last year, Cloud Atlas was released. It’s central theme of reincarnation plays with the concept of time as well. It’s really good, as good as the book!

So maybe we are there…. if so, technology plays a primary role in making us feel we are in the future, but it also makes us feel we need to keep up. Or we risk being in the past.

We are living in an age that is very now focussed.

We are hungry for information and information has become our currency. On Twitter there are two approaches as highlighted by adlandsuit:

“either, ‘Check us out! We’re WACKY’; or, ‘Check us out! We knew about that interesting thing that those other people did BEFORE YOU”.

It feels like a race, but it really shouldn’t be. We tend not to read things in full any more…I’d be surprised if you have got this far…but if so, read on…. It’s all about skimming what you can lay your hands on to increase your currency.

The thing with technology is that it advances soooo quickly that unless you are a techie geek the inevitable outcome is that we will simply ignore it.

Did you know that most people who use a Smartphone will use just 20% of the functionality? - I just made that up, but I bet it’s not far off.

My point is this. I think we have enough technology already, but we don’t explore how it can enhance our lives. If we really are in the future and focussed on the now, we should slow down a little and take more time to consider how to use it to improve our experiences today.

If you didn’t know the BBM story… BBM was an app that Blackberry had in it’s handsets back in 2008 and some clever kid actually took the time to explore it, though it was cool, and started to BBM his mates.

It took hold and Blackberry became a youth brand virtually overnight, but not because they spotted how BBM could enhance our lives.

The manufacturers of Smart TV’s are marching on, creating features that people play around with for a while, but viewers soon revert to using it as a passive screen. I know that for sure because we’ve just finished some work on that subject.

It would be wiser to slow down on the developments and communicate how to use the functionality they already have.

But that’s another topic, for another day.

Self Funded, UK based Qualitative Research looking at how Linear...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:51:00 +0100

Self Funded, UK based Qualitative Research looking at how Linear and on demand content is consumed and shared! Please get in touch if you’d like to learn more…

Screen Wars

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:12:45 +0000

Screen Wars:

We’ve just finished a self funded study with our newly created future thinking community. Let me know if you’d like to hear more. Stephen.mellor@tpoll.com

25% of kids born today will reach 100….or so I thought....

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:19:12 +0000

25% of kids born today will reach 100….or so I thought. This video by designed to move highlights how children may have a shorter life expectancy than parents. Interesting advances in medicine and nutrition are offset by technology keeping kids glued to the screen.

Test Mentality in offline and online qualitative research

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:59:47 +0000

Test Mentality in offline and online qualitative research:

modern-qualitative:

I’ve written this paper for #UXmatters about techniques and respondents in qualitative research for websites. I’ve conducted a lot of research about user experience and website design over the past few years and there are now plenty of online qualitative tools that can be used to remove the ever present test mentality that respondents display.

I guess that many companies are now on their second or third iteration of their website and website design has become a specialist science. UXMatters is one of those websites that is an absolute gold mine of rich material and insights for this type of thing.

If you need to run some qualitative research on your website please contact me on stephen.mellor@tpoll.com and I’d be happy to talk you through our approaches to this type of research!

Steve

Test Mentality in offline and online qualitative research

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:14:59 +0000

Test Mentality in offline and online qualitative research:

modern-qualitative:

I’ve written this paper for #UXmatters about techniques and respondents in qualitative research for websites. I’ve conducted a lot of research about user experience and website design over the past few years and there are now plenty of online qualitative tools that can be used to remove the ever present test mentality that respondents display.

I guess that many companies are now on their second or third iteration of their website and website design has become a specialist science. UXMatters is one of those websites that is an absolute gold mine of rich material and insights for this type of thing.

If you need to run some qualitative research on your website please contact me on stephen.mellor@tpoll.com and I’d be happy to talk you through our approaches to this type of research!

Steve

I love how continental brands are happy to laugh at themselves....

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 10:29:09 +0000

I love how continental brands are happy to laugh at themselves. UK brands rarely attempt this (I can’t recollect an example). I guess they imagine you would’t take the brand seriously, but surely the opposite is true - in mocking yourself you communicate confidence. And isn’t self depreciation one of those traits we are known for in the UK?

Qualitative RM / AD required

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:38:00 +0000

The qualitative unit at Tqual is expanding quickly and we are looking for a mid level qualitative researcher to share in the success. If you are a Research Manager craving autonomy or want to move up to AD please read on. We can offer you a flexible working environment, friendly and professional team culture, excellent target and bonus arrangements and a client list including top of the range media and consumer goods clients across Europe and the U.S.

Our qualitative work involves cutting edge technologies as well as traditional qualitative techniques. This means you’ll be a confident face to face qualitative researcher - it’ll be at least 50% of the work you do. The technology is something we can teach you.

We need a researcher experienced in taking briefs, writing proposals, conducting fieldwork and writing reports. It’s very much a research oriented position with little requirement for business generation. We are an international business, so fluency in at least one language besides English is required.

If you are interested in an informal chat about this position, please let me know by clicking here! The position is available immediately.

Steve

Some great speakers at the Social Media Research conference last...

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:06:29 +0100

Some great speakers at the Social Media Research conference last week. Boots, Channel 4, Nokia, J&J were all present in the audience, although I counted 80 agencies and 8 clients in total - which tells you how engaged research buyers are at the moment - or how busy they are - depending on your point of view.

Personally I enjoyed @DarrenMarkNoyce from Skopos who made the very good point that MROC’s can be regarded as social media. I hadn’t thought of them in that way before but it makes perfect sense. He also made the point that very few agencies publicise themselves as specialising in social media monitoring. Personally I think that whilst research agencies know they can easily do it by using one of the many tools available, it feels like the realm of PR and media agencies. I also think that clients aren’t sure about the ROI of measuring it either.

Cue Charlie Osmond CEO of Freshminds. He highlighted how ROI of social media is difficult to measure because there are so many effects of cross channel marketing. Go for it if you are measuring tactical campaigns, but step away if you are looking to measure strategy.

Most entertaining sesh was from @ploungetweets who shipped in 6 teens to discuss how to appeal in social media. They made the very interesting point that twitter is now where it’s at because it’s more current, with FB relegated to what ‘my mum uses’. I’ve picked that up myself in research a while back - FB just seems a little middle aged these days. One teen was using Tumblr and talking about it socially as well. They didn’t talk about the idea of being in a closed MROC which would have been cool, but good, insightful presentation on Gen Y.

Mark Donovan from Channel 4 managed to single handedly increase my library of social media buzz words with his paper on social media and TV. Loved it. My favourite was ‘peer reccomendation’. C4 viewers are highly connected - more than the average viewer - and C4 obviously know how to use and assess social media as hashtags appear all over their content these days.

Overall it was a good event. More clients would have been good to hear what they want and need, but my guess is they are busy > uninterested.

Sky's the limit

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:47:10 +0100

I have to say that having been invited with other agencies to Sky’s Strategy and Insight agency day a couple of weeks ago that they are becoming one of the most organised and open minded clients I’ve worked for. One of the most interesting developments is the ‘awesome debrief challenge’ which separates reporting and debriefing into three categories, for which the research team receives increments of recognition (and points in a league!) depending on which category of debrief they ask to be delivered.

The day ended with a speed dating style of meet the team which worked really well. I was really impressed with it all!

The Sun - representative as ever. I first used tinterweb in 1997...

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 09:36:00 +0100

The Sun - representative as ever. I first used tinterweb in 1997 and immediately saw the benefits - although the internet on your fridge really didn’t take off did it? I have recently used a Segway which I predict we will be all using to get to work in 10 years time (yes I know they’ve been out since 1997 as well).

A funny thing happened to me at the focus group

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 15:31:00 +0100

Besides running communities and doing online qualitative research using forums and live groups we do a fair bit of good old fashioned face to face research - yup, actually talking to people - face to face, using our mouths to talk. On Wednesday last week I spent the evening talking to some lovely people in Brum about a new concept in energy tariffs.

Everyone walked in and helped themselves to tea and coffee and sat down on the golden velour chairs, eyeing each other up to see who they were supposed to have something in common with. I scanned the room for the right number of respondents - eight on this occasion. Check. Were they about 45-60 years old? Check. Four men? Check. Four women…one…two…three….um….four.

Margery (I have changed her name) was stirring her tea and then looked up at me with rosy cheeks and green eye shadow. ’Oh, there’s a transvestite in my focus group this evening’, I thought. ‘That’s okay’.

I, like everyone else, was trying to not notice her so noticeably. When she introduced herself she looked back into her tea, giving everyone the chance to stare and evaluate freely. I could read everyone’s mind as they whirred and clicked in analysis, is he or isn’t she?

The good news is that we live in a modern age and I’m glad to say that after 15 minutes of so of moderation and group management Margery was rattling on about her boiler whilst everybody else happily chipped in. To be honest I think the game was up when her mobile rang to the tune of Kylies ‘can’t get you out of my head’, but she was the perfect respondent and whilst I’m a little greyer I’m also more worldly wise.

The Real Food Group #OMRC

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:15:25 +0100

We’ve recently launched this community of food lovers, available to clients who would like to target foodies quickly and cost effectively for qualitative research. This community be taking advantage of all of the new Tqual software upgrades that are due in the next two weeks including a makeover of the bulletin board and community forum interface as well as the new social research app.

Get in touch if you’d like to use it for your qualitative research - there are 2,000 in this community, so it can be used for quantitative research as well.

Aww I Love this. Nice one Coke.

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:08:58 +0100

Aww I Love this. Nice one Coke.

A good qualitative community manager/ quallie required

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:10:00 +0100

We are growing quite rapidly and need 4 new bods to help deal with the increase in business. Personally I am looking for a good qualitative SRE that likes the idea of working for a company that is rapidly growing, with a great client list, who is as happy with managing a community as running face to face groups and writing qualitative debriefs. We can offer good opportunities for personal growth - you’ll be writing proposals and reports within no time - and good ones at that. You can get to me at stephen.mellor@tpoll.com

According to the #BBC future media team, 77% of the online population participate in digital conversations

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:24:58 +0100

According to the #BBC future media team, 77% of the online population participate in digital conversations :

Are people beginning to be more confident about airing their opinions online? Are more likely to engage in online conversations than was previously thought? Yes, apparently.

The brilliant Lauren Vargas talks compellingly about community...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:32:29 +0100

The brilliant Lauren Vargas talks compellingly about community management. We run quite a few research communities (and my qualitative work is done within many of them) and I’m aware that they are, besides a valuable resource of insight, an important marketing channel. The questions we ask reflect so much on the organisations we run research communities for. Waste participants time with long and repetitive surveys and the brand will be held accountable, not the research organisation. Luckily, the online qualitative research we do tends to be seen as fun, exciting and interesting for participants and (so far!) every online group and forum I’ve done ends with participants telling us how much they’ve enjoyed it. That can only be good for the community as a whole.

The popularity of #MadMen...on Twitter.

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:25:00 +0100

I’m a big fan of Mad Men. There’s been quite a bit on the wire today about how the audience figures have dropped to just under 100,000 now that it’s on Sky Atlantic. They were 300,000 when they were on BBC4. Those figures are representative of the Sky customer base being lower and Sky Atlantic not being available on Virgin Media.

Anyway.

Below is an infographic I created (using Visual-ly) looking at how Mad Men was tweeted in the month before it aired. The overall number of tweets surpass the viewing figures and it was mentioned 58,000 times yesterday when it aired.

I wasn’t too sure what to make of it, so I did the same for The Voice! that also seems to have had a lot of publicity:

I was expecting The Voice to be higher. A couple of conclusions:

1, Mad Men has a better level of pre-air tweeting. There’s been LOADS and it seems to have paid off.

2, I guess that the demographic of Mad Men fits the twitter demographic very closely

The challenge for PR bods is to generate interest in between the shows to really leverage WOM.

Second screen / Dual screen increasingly referred to as 'chatterboxing'

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:59:58 +0000

Second screen / Dual screen increasingly referred to as 'chatterboxing':

Good to have a name for this type of thing. It’s been increasingly in popularity for a while now, especially using Twitter.