While quantitative data enjoy a warm, positive reception across most businesses — engaging decision-makers with qualitative insight can often prove a greater challenge. Lacking in statistical rigour, the individual and human perspectives that qualitative research brings to the table are easy to overlook for many. However, to do so is to ignore an important, contextual basis for decision-making. As insight professionals, we know this. We understand the balance between qual and quant that leads to an in-depth, rounded view of customers, consumers and behaviours.
The real question that many insights professionals grapple with is: how do we ensure stakeholders and…
We often come across unexpected issues in the insights industry, especially in the research process things never go quite as smoothly as we might desire. However, if there is one thing we can agree on, it is that quality is something that should never be compromised on, even when we’re working to a tighter than usual schedule. How can we safeguard quality while speeding up qualitative fieldwork?
Have Quality Control Tools Ready in your Stack
When time is of the essence, utilise resources in your research technology stack. For example, have a good recruitment or sample provider on tap to help aid you throughout the research process. These…
Delegation is one of the most important management skills we could learn in any profession. The ability to hand off the right task to the right person can be tough, especially if you’re not sure if you have the right person on hand, but mostly because it’s one of the biggest acts of trust you can find within the corporate workplace.
In the insights industry, delegation is more important than ever. With the amount of data we sift through on a daily basis, it can be hard to keep up with it all and we end up being buried in…
Data tells a story. As researchers, our role is to explore this story on behalf of stakeholders. Sometimes this is as simple as testing customer preference on, for example, tangible physical attributes:
‘Do you prefer the green or the blue?’
‘How likely on a scale from 1 to 10 would you be to pick this packaging from a supermarket shelf?’
This form of research is great for a quick snapshot of customer preference and behaviour.
However, there’s a story and a journey behind these choices that we don’t see unless we dig a little further. By understanding this journey, the…
What defines success in an insights team?
There are many aspects that define success, but one pivotal factor that propels us towards success is the composition of the insights team. When we think about an insights team, we might automatically start considering the types of researchers within the team, and a hierarchical structure of junior/senior insight professionals all working as one, taking on different tasks depending on seniority and experience level.
That’s not wrong, but as another, less literal perspective, the individual insight professionals are only part of what makes a successful insights team. This infographic outlines the anatomy of…
The researcher-stakeholder relationship is frequently and widely discussed, yet in a practical sense it’s not always clearly laid out as to how insight professionals can achieve a stronger relationship with those who request, receive and benefit from their insights. With some valuable input from Ki Arnould Aguero, Senior UX Researcher at a Fortune 50 company, on how she’s tackled this very task, here are four practical approaches to fostering strong stakeholder relationships.
At this moment in time, if we google “data reporting formats”, even adding a descriptor like “modern” or “innovative” to it, the first few organic results are always How to Write a Data Report or The Best Tools for Data Reporting, all filled with data presentation software producing graphs, charts, and data tables. This makes some sense as it’s what insight professionals have relied on since the first survey was conducted and what stakeholders outside of the insights industry are used to.
However, those graphs and tables are flawed when trying to communicate complex storylines and insights. Stakeholders are no…
In the Insights Industry, we are constantly on the lookout for ways to become more efficient. We have found ways to automate extraneous processes, design more impactful research experiences (for researchers, stakeholders, and participants), and are exploring new ways to report valuable insights to help stakeholders activate insights to their fullest potential. But we still have a way to go until we are able to call ourselves a truly efficient working industry.
In our quest for efficiency, it is increasingly evident that we have become too used to waste; wasted insights, data, resources, budget, time, and more due to many…
Technology stacks are more frequently discussed in the marketing and software development industries. As the name suggests, these are personalised ecosystems of technology created to work in conjunction with each other as and when they’re needed, sat ready and waiting for teams to use on a daily basis. With the amount of software out there for insight professionals to take advantage of in all industries, building a technology stack that works for any occasion has never been more feasible.
What isn’t talked about quite as much, is a market research technology stack. What technologies should insight professionals stack in order…
Agile research is a common talking point in the insights industry. We are constantly on the lookout for new tools, new techniques, new methodologies, new anything to help us design and implement agile research experiences easier, quicker, and cheaper than ever before. But we still haven’t reached the point where we can conclusively say that we are able to nail agile research experiences whenever we require it.
What is the obstacle that we can’t quite get over? …
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