Seeing Is Believing: Understanding the Use of Webcams in Bulletin Boards and the Insights It Can Add to Online Qualitative Research
Don’t know much about using webcam responses inside bulletin boards? It’s a recent addition to our bulletin board focus group software, QualBoard, allowing you to quickly and seamlessly gather all the richness of a participant’s response—including body language, tone of voice and emotion—with the convenience of an online bulletin board discussion. It’s another tool in the expanding online qualitative research toolbox, and researchers—like Heather Mitchell, a senior moderator at Bloomfield, Conn.-based The Pert Group —are already seeing success as they take advantage of it. We recently talked to Mitchell about her firm’s experience with webcam response, its uses and the insight it can provide. Check out what she had to say:
Testing the Technology: Webcam response in a bulletin board focus group is “one of the hottest new technologies,” according to Mitchell, which means that The Pert Group wanted to be one of its first adopters. They tested several platforms, but Mitchell says QualBoard quickly became her firm’s go-to solution, thanks to its ability to “incorporate multimedia (including video) in flexible ways that I have not experienced in any other platforms.” She adds, “We have explored a lot of different competitive platforms and found 20|20’s to be both cost-effective and the most user-friendly. It’s dynamic you can toggle between media so easily and seamlessly to best suit the needs of the question at hand and the flow of the discussion guides.”
Uses for Webcam Response: The Pert Group has used the webcam response feature in two primary ways: behavioral observations (like those common with in-home product testing) and creative introductory exercises that help bring the target consumer to life. “Webcam response has benefited our insights tremendously,” Mitchell says. “You see more than if you just asked respondents to tell you about it. You see things they wouldn’t otherwise think to tell you about, so it takes the insight to another level. Whereas respondents might talk in a focus group about where they store something at home, you can’t get a good sense of the space constraints without seeing it for yourself. Respondents can tell you where they keep a product and that it works or doesn’t work for them, but you can’t appreciate it until you see it.”
Easy Editing: One of her favorite features of QualBoard with webcams is the EasyClip video editor that comes with the platform. “We can clip individual sound bites or make montages of different responses and insert them into our client presentations,” she says. “You get so much video from the study, and we give clients access to all of it, but the clips are key for the presentations, and 20|20 makes it so easy to capture those.”
A Far-Reaching Technology: You may be quick to assume that webcam response isn’t a viable option for every demographic—the elderly, for example—but Mitchell says that hasn’t been her experience. “I can say that we have successfully used webcam response with all different age ranges, from youth to retired individuals, both genders, and respondents from across this nation and abroad,” she says.
