2020 has accelerated the rate of change in every industry. Qualitative Research is no different. 

The pandemic is transforming how we remotely research human behavior. Lockdowns and social distancing have - for now - made in-person qualitative research impossible. If you’re used to running in-person IDIs, Focus Groups, or UX Labs, the chances are your yearning to get back “in the room” and work your magic face to face.

However, given the current situation, it’s unlikely qualitative researchers, even with appropriate social distancing measures in place, will be back in any focus group facility or UX lab for the remainder of 2020. 

As a result, everyone has piled into Zoom, but results can be mixed. 

The Limitations of Using Zoom for Online IDIs and Focus Groups

In the new ‘virtual’ normal, the go-to solution for doing IDIs and Focus Groups remotely has been Zoom. It’s free to start with and cheap if you upgrade to a pro plan. 

There are several benefits of synchronous online qualitative research:

• You can still talk to respondents face to face

• You don’t have to travel

• You can research respondents anywhere

• It’s safe

However, when we talk to our clients, simply transitioning in-person IDIs / Focus Groups to synchronous/live Zoom calls is perceived as being a poor substitute for being physically present with respondents. 

This is especially pronounced on online Focus Groups where a number of issues reduce the attractiveness of this methodology:

- Wifi can be patchy

- You miss body language signals

- Respondents get limited time to talk

- Interaction can be stunted

- You can’t read the energy of the room

In short, something is missing. 

To compensate for that missing element, the researchers we speak to (who were doing the Zoom thing way before COVID) have already evolved their remote qualitative research to include an asynchronous qual component. To achieve this, their go-to approach is to pre-task using mobile diary studies. 

What is Asynchronous Qualitative Research?

Before we talk about asynchronous qualitative research, we should first define synchronous qualitative research. 

Simply put, with synchronous online Qualitative Research (aka a Zoom IDI), you talk 1-1 or 1-many with Respondents, live, for 1-2 hours. In that time window, you need to work your magic to figure out everything you need to know about them for your project sponsor.

In online IDIs, you get 1-2 hours of facetime. Although you get to explore and probe what they say, the reality is that all behaviors surfaced are claimed behaviors. 

Respondents are sitting at their laptops, telling you what they think or do and you need to trust that they behave the way they claim they do. As a result, if a client asks you for proof of claimed behaviors, all you have to rely on is a clip of what they told you in the IDI.

Furthermore, what they tell you is likely post-rationalized and not entirely contextual. 

If you want proof of actual in-the-moment behavior, you need to pre-task that IDI with a mobile diary study.

The Benefits of Asynchronous Qualitative Research

With asynchronous qualitative research (e.g. a longitudinal diary study using a mobile ethnography application like Indeemo), you still get 1-2 hours of engagement with respondents but spread out over several days. 

Compared to asynchronous 2-hour IDI, the following benefits apply: 

• Data capture takes place over several days which gives you more time to get to know the respondent

• This allows respondents to record what they do when they do it

• All behaviors are recorded in the moment. There are no post rationalization effects. 

• It’s more likely to capture spontaneous system 1 type behaviors 

• It’s in-context: they’re recording that video using their smartphone while cooking dinner or shopping online (instead of recalling their last experience cooking or shopping)

• No researcher effect: they’re on their own, acting normally in a neutral and real way.

Compared to a respondent on a webcam telling you how they think they behave, smartphone video allows respondents to vividly show you. You get to virtually walk in their shoes.

Secondly and more crucially, with a longitudinal diary study, respondents record behaviors repetitively. This is huge!

For example, not only do you get to watch a video of what they have for breakfast one day or how they shop online, with a repetitive daily diary task, you get to see what they actually have for breakfast every day.

It gives you video proof that you can show your client of repetitive, in-the-moment, in-context, everyday rituals, and routines. Gritty. Raw. Real. 

You Still Get to Probe and Interact 

With an asynchronous online qualitative research platform like Indeemo, we display all those in-the-moment videos and photos that respondents recorded over the course of the diary study on a Pinterest style dashboard. 

Furthermore, researchers can probe and interact with respondents using comments and push notifications. Researchers conduct their projects asynchronously using a social networking style app and dashboard. 

For our clients who have been doing this since before COVID, an asynchronous, interactive Mobile Diary Study allows them to gather and probe all the behavioral data they need. 

Exploration + Explanation 

Some clients will still insist on a live Zoom however and for these briefs, our recommendation is to propose it as part of a combined Synchronous and Asynchronous approach where you pre-task first and then do that online IDI.

Pre-tasking allows both you and your client to start small, learn to work with a new methodology and make sure you are comfortable with scaling up to more in-depth digital qual.

Why?

When you pre-task using a mobile diary study, you no longer rely on Zoom for exploration, you can use it for an explanation. 

This is the Supercharger

When you eventually do your Zoom IDI, you can then screen share the Indeemo dashboard via Zoom and “take the respondent back”.. to that moment where they did that thing in that video. You get them to relive ‘the what’ and then explain ‘the why’ - enabling you to glean richer insights. 

With a combined asynchronous + synchronous approach, the mobile diary study helps you explore and the online IDI helps you explain. 

You no longer have to rely on claimed behavior. 

You get to probe actual, in-the-moment, real-life, recorded behavior.  

Don’t just take our word for it 

Tom Woodnut is an award winning Qual Researcher who has been leveraging asynchronous online qualitative research for over 13 years. We asked Tom what his take is on all of this and here is what he has to say:

"I use diverse on and offline qualitative methods.  So my view is both balanced and informed. I've specialised in asynchronous online and mobile qualitative research over the last 13 years, because this approach helps overcome the shortcomings of real-time group discussions (both face to face and webcam groups).  Asynchronous online qual generates more vivid feedback, stronger validity and greater depth.  Respondents go into way more depth, because more than one person can speak at once (8 times more in fact, if you compare the total feedback you get per person in an 8 person group). The approach enhances validity, both by reducing group and researcher effects and by overcoming the cognitive bias inherent in the way people inaccurately recall things when out of context.  And they create more colourful outputs, because of the 'real world' video, photo and screen recording content that they enable.  This makes reporting more impactful and vivid".  

If you’d like to drill into this a bit more, Tom has written about the benefits of asynchronous mobile qualitative research in this post.

Summary 

In an era where, temporarily at least, the only (qualitative research) show in town is online qualitative research, techniques need to evolve. Zoom on its own is great but it doesn’t tell you the whole story. 

To get a deeper understanding (and proof) of real-life behaviors so you can tell the whole story, you should include asynchronous, online qualitative research in your approach. 

The simple way to do this is by pre-tasking that IDI with a mobile diary study. 

This isn’t just our hypothesis. 

This is the feedback we have obtained, repeatedly, from clients who have been taking this async + sync qual approach since way before COVID. This isn’t anything new to us. We’ve been doing this for 4 years now. 

Online IDIs or Focus Groups will never beat being in the room where you can work your magic. 

However, even when you do get back in that room, the question remains whether a 1-2 hour in-person window is sufficient to enable you to prove the human behavior you need to tell the whole story? 

Our clients say no and that’s why, whether in person or online, they use mobile diary studies to supercharge their IDIs. 

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