Unleashing the Power of Video Diaries: A Beginner's Guide to UX and Market Research
If you work in UX Research or Market Research, then video diaries are a powerful tool for capturing context rich, in-the-moment insights. This post is a quick guide to video diaries and how you can leverage them as a tool to get richer insights from your research participants.
What is a Video Diary?
A video diary study serves as an online qualitative research methodology utilised in both Market Research and UX Research. Its primary objective is to capture users' day-to-day behaviours and activities through video recordings, offering in-the-moment insights.
In a video diary study, participants take on the role of both the videographer and the narrator, capturing and documenting their experiences within the context of their everyday lives.
Why Video Diaries Matter
Video diary studies allow researchers to immerse themselves in the lives of respondents, enabling them to grasp the genuine emotions, feelings, and habits of participants through observed behavior rather than relying solely on recall after the fact.
Beyond the video uploads, participants have the freedom to enrich their entries by including supplementary content such as photos, notes, and even mobile screen recordings. This multifaceted approach provides a more comprehensive understanding of participants' experiences, ensuring richer insights for your research endeavours.
What is a Diary Study?
Indeemo Founder & CEO Eugene Murphy describes a Diary Study and the different context this qualitative research methodology can be applied.
How does a Video Diary work?
The process of implementing a video diary study begins with researchers recruiting suitable participants, employing familiar methods such as Focus Groups or User Interviews. To ensure a representative sample, appropriate incentives are offered to the respondents.
Once recruited, participants are provided with the Indeemo Video Diary App, which serves as the tool for capturing their video entries. The video diary operates on the principle of respondents completing assigned tasks over a span of multiple days. To facilitate this, the Indeemo app offers three distinct tasking features:
All at once Tasking
This feature allows respondents to complete all tasks in any format, and in their own time. It is particularly useful when researchers require a comprehensive snapshot of participants' behaviours and activities.
Scheduled Tasking
Scheduled tasking is a highly effective option for video diary studies. Researchers can set a schedule for daily tasks, ensuring that participants receive a new task each day. By utilizing the start and end date functionality, tasks can be assigned to begin on a specific day and conclude on the subsequent day. This approach enables respondents to focus solely on the designated task for the day, as the previous day's task automatically disappears once the new task appears. This seamless progression streamlines the participants' understanding of their daily responsibilities.
Sequential Tasking
In sequential tasking, researchers have the flexibility to assign similar or repetitive tasks on a daily basis. This approach allows for a deeper exploration of respondents' "day in the life" behaviours, enabling a comprehensive understanding of their routines and habits.
Indeemo Video Diary App
Key Features of Video Diary Study Apps
1 - Easy Edit Capability
Easily trim out the relevant sections you want so you can share snippets with clients. It’s as easy as trimming a video on your iPhone or Android.
2 - Automated Video Transcription
Videos are automatically transcribed into searchable transcripts in minutes. Automated video transcription helps researchers isolate key phrases used by respondents without needing to watch the entire video.
3 - Spot Trends Quickly with Keyword Cloud
Spot trends quickly with our keywords tool. The keyword cloud function enables easy analysis so you can search for the main keywords used by the respondents.
4 - Minimise upload times with Video Compression
The in app video compression minimises upload times and mobile data usage. Record user experience interactions lasting up to 10 minutes / upload.
5 - Capture Video When Offline
Respondents can record videos, take photos, add notes and post these responses even when out of network coverage. Indeemo will store the responses on the app and upload them in a queue once the network coverage is available again.
6 - Enterprise Grade Security
Indeemo is ISO 27001 certified, HIPAA compliant and GDPR compliant giving you peace of mind that your users' data is secure.
Key Benefits of Video Diaries for Qualitative Market Research and User Research
1 - Easy for Respondents to Use
First, our remote video diary study tool enables respondents to record videos from the comfort of their own environments and at a time that is convenient to them. The fact they can record the video themselves also removes any hint of external bias, and thus ensures respondents are as relaxed as possible.
2 - Cost-Effective Approach
It is a very cost-effective approach to qualitative research. Costs involved with traditional video studies such as travel, accommodation, and recording video per person is eliminated. With a remote video diary, the respondents just need a smartphone to record their responses. It is also worth noting that most modern smartphones can record high-quality videos - something that was simply not possible 2-3 years ago.
3 - Safe Methodology
As the approach removes the need for person-to-person contact it is also safe to conduct during uncertain times due to COVID. It is also likely that post-COVID respondents will be more cautious about unnecessary in-person engagement so the remote element will likely continue to appeal.
4 - Significant Time Saving
The time spent on travel and conducting one-one interviews sequentially is removed resulting in considerable time savings for researchers. Once the project is set up researchers can simply watch the Indeemo dashboard as videos taken by respondents are uploaded. Without the need to be physically present in situ the time saving is significant. The approach also scales - you can have tens of respondents active at the same time.
The Indeemo app also supports group reminder and push notifications which helps the researchers to send reminders or follow-up messages to groups of respondents.
5 - Impactful video Outputs for Clients
The rich video format lets respondents tell their own stories while also providing a window into their contexts. Observed behaviour is also more compelling than relying solely on recall. You get to share the real voice of the customer, capturing facial expressions as well as subtle cues. On seeing their facial reaction you can get a deeper understanding of the respondents thinking and feelings towards your product/service.
Finally, the audiovisual nature of the output offers rich data (over say just a written report) enabling researchers to provide impact for clients.
Versatile Applications of Video Diary Studies in Market Research and UX Research
Video diary studies offer a wide range of applications, spanning from capturing sensitive data healthcare research to customer journey mapping.
Day in the life Diary Studies
Utilising video diaries to document respondents' daily routines and activities provides invaluable insights into their consumption patterns, purchasing behaviours, and daily priorities. By assigning repeated tasks to participants, researchers can gain a deeper understanding of what matters most to them on a day-to-day basis.
Furthermore, video diaries excel in capturing spontaneous behaviour, allowing researchers to uncover the underlying motivations and decision-making processes of respondents.
Video Diaries for Consumer Behaviour
Consumer video diaries prove highly effective in recording the daily or weekly routines surrounding consumption and shopping habits. Participants can utilize photo or video uploads to document their consumption experiences, including details such as what, when, and where they consume products or services. This approach is particularly powerful in use cases like meal time diaries or beverage occasion diaries, providing nuanced insights into consumer behaviour.
UX Research / User diaries
Video diary studies offer a valuable tool for UX research projects, enabling researchers to delve into the user experience of products, services, or websites. Leveraging mobile screen recording capabilities, researchers gain an additional layer of understanding by observing how participants interact with the UI/UX elements.
For instance, respondents can complete screen recording tasks and then provide their feedback on the UI/UX through short video diaries, allowing researchers to grasp the participants' feelings and impressions.
Let us support your next video diary study
Using a video diary study as part of a market research or UX research project is a great way to gain a deeper understanding of consumers’ / users’ daily lives behaviours and habits.
The research participants’ own video footage helps generate rich insights and the authentic format helps gain powerful access to what matters to them in their daily lives.