Digital Ethnography: the alternative to in-person qualitative research Interviews and Focus Groups

Category : Mobile Ethnography ; Qualitative Research

Over the past few weeks, we have been inundated with requests from customers looking for a remote alternative to doing in-person, synchronous Qualitative Research (User Interviews, IDIs and Focus Groups).

They’ve secured budget, successfully recruited respondents and are ready to kick off. However, because of remote work and possible travel restrictions, doing User Interviews, Focus Groups, in-person Ethnography or Shopalongs is no longer possible.

If, like most of our clients, you’re a self-employed consultant, this means an immediate loss of income.

Hence the blog. Please read on to learn how you can keep your Market Research / UX Research business going by transitioning in-person research methodologies online and doing remote Qualitative Research using Digital Ethnography.

Why move from interviews to Digital Ethnography?

Interviews and Focus Groups have been the spine of qualitative research for many years. Meeting participants face to face offer brands and researchers an opportunity to explore and probe the thoughts, attitudes and experiences of consumers / users that represent their target demographic.

At Indeemo, we are strong advocates of multi-method research approaches. Nothing beats layering remote digital qual on top of in-person qual on top of Quant. The more layers of data you have, the deeper the understanding.

However, in an era where travel is banned and social distancing recommended, digitising your research offering to include remote qualitative research methodologies is no longer an elective consideration, it’s a necessary business continuity strategy.

Using Digital Ethnography instead of in-person interviews or focus groups

If you are a researcher with a project in the pipeline that needs to be done remotely, Digital Ethnography (also referred to as Mobile Ethnography) can help.

Mobile ethnography represents a new, alternative, remote Qualitative research approach that delivers rich, raw, contextual, in the moment insights.

The beauty of the approach is that it is a highly effective means for researchers to remotely capture context-rich insights without ever leaving their desks. All respondents need is access to a Smartphone. It also requires no travel and respondents can complete their activities in their own time.

Instead of respondents travelling to a central location or focus group facility, they can provide insights directly from the comfort of their own homes or work places.

Because they record themselves in-the-moment, you get to remotely experience how they behave in their everyday contexts.

How does Digital Ethnography Work?

With an app that is easier to use than Facebook, respondents record their thoughts and behaviours in-the-moment. This gives you, the researcher, a contextual periscope into their everyday lives.

They complete tasks that show you what they are doing / thinking / feeling by uploading open-ended text, photos, screen-shots, videos, selfie videos or mobile screen recordings.

Think of it as an interactive, remote pre-task or homework assignment, but on steroids.

Anyone doing in-person qual is likely already assigning homework ahead of the meet-up.

With Digital or Mobile Ethnography, the pre-work becomes the method.

You interact with research participants. Remotely

Furthermore, you can interact with respondents remotely and conduct your research asynchronously over a few days instead of synchronously in a few hours.

Using comments and push notifications, you get to probe what respondents tell you and show you. Sure, it’s not the same as eyeballing them and reading their body language as you work your magic to get under the skin of what they are really thinking but it’s a pretty close substitute.

For today’s digital natives who’d rather Tik Tok than talk face to face, mobile is their preferred way of connecting and communicating.

Comments and push notifications allow you to connect and engage, in the moment.

Digital ethnography is powerful, and simple to do.

The output of remote qualitative research using Digital Ethnography is a rich, vibrant, dashboard of photos, videos and text, accessible via an intuitive, Pinterest-style interface. It is super simple to use and features a myriad of capabilities such as comments and push notifications for moderating, automated video transcription, automated keyword tools, collage capabilities, tagging and coding tools.

As a result, we have hundreds of clients who have transitioned from in-person to remote qualitative research using Mobile Ethnography and Video Diary Studies.

Why?

What respondents reveal when there is no one else in the room is giving them insights they were previously unable to get in a 1-2 hour face to face methodology.

Research sponsors can participate remotely too!

Indeemo features an Observer login that enables your clients / stakeholders to log into the dashboard and get read only access to the project and the uploads from the respondents.

They get to experience the everyday reality of their users and consumers lives, remotely. Nothing empowers empathy as quickly as a dashboard of raw, real-life, multimedia moments captured in context and in the moment.

This feature alone will transform their research experience and their understanding of their target audience.

The dashboard also enables them to continuously mine the insights over time without ever leaving their desks.

Doing remote user or consumer research using Digital Ethnography is easy

Pivoting your in-person research project to mobile is much easier than you’d think:

Recruitment for digital ethnography and Interviews / Focus Groups is the same

Recruiting for a digital ethnography or a remote diary study is the same as recruiting for an IDI or a Focus Group. You use the same Qual Recruiter. You pay them similar recruitment fees. You get them to screen the same way as you would for an in-person project. It takes the same time. Nothing changes here regarding recruitment.

If your recruiter hasn’t done any mobile or digital projects before, don’t worry. We will get them up to speed and explain the process. We have a dedicated recruiter login to Indeemo that helps them invite respondents and track their activity. In 30 minutes, they will be experts.

So, if you have already recruited, don’t worry. You can use the same respondents and work with your existing recruiter.

Research participant incentives are the same

The average incentive for a consumer doing a Mobile Ethnography or remote diary study over 1 week is the same as what you would pay them to attend a 1-2 hour focus group.

Tasks are typically 15-20 minutes per day and over a week this adds up to about 2-3 hours. Because they do not need to travel, they can allocate this saved travel time to completing tasks in their own homes.

So, if you already have a project commissioned and are worrying about budget - don’t!

Remote ethnographic research projects can be set up in a few days

Transitioning to remote qualitative research using Mobile Ethnography is easy, and quick!

Worried about how to refactor your project to make it work on mobile - don’t! We will assist in preparing your discussion guide (an Indeemo Task List) and optimising it for mobile so that you get similar results.

We will set up the project for you. All you have to do is prepare a Word Doc task list template and submit that to us for set up. We can get projects set up in 1 working day.

Worried about using a new technology? Don’t!

Indeemo is super simple to use. Think of it as a hybrid of Pinterest and a private 1 to 1 Facebook. With 45 minutes of training, you are good to go and our 6* support and video help pages will ensure you have a seamless experience.

We will also help you onboard your Recruiter, your clients and will take care of the Tech Support for your respondents.

Let us Support You

We have supported thousands of remote, Qualitative research projects. We work with everyone from Freelance Consultants, to boutique Consultancies, to large Agencies to Enterprise Clients.

We’re experts at mobile qualitative research and we always go the extra mile.

So if you have a signed-off budget but may need to postpone or cancel a planned project, working with a Mobile Ethnography Platform like Indeemo will help you keep your research going - from home - in these challenging times.