There are few things as stimulating as a good conversation (to me, anyway) and some of the best I have are with IMediaConnection Chief Content Officer Brad Berens. Recently we were talking about rapid research. I don't mean the rush to publish, I mean reading "We went out and talked to 256 people and here's what we found out..." and getting to the details to discover someone literally walked into the mall (for example), asked a bunch of people a question and writing it up.
Do I think there's value in that method? Yes, a great deal. Done correctly. NextStage uses aspects of this method often. Differently.
Brad and I were talking about using long time scales in research because short time scales tend to ignore complicating factors, thus producing erroneous results. Let me share some simple examples of this.
People navigate the same website differently at different points in time during the day. This has been common knowledge with NextStage clients for some time. Readers who followed my Site Development Lags Expectation know that site visitors' satisfaction and experience can change in as little as twenty minutes.
Rapid research is subject to the kinds of variances shown in these charts and reports. It reminds me of something I learned when I drove trucks, "Go downhill in whatever gear you used going uphill." This applies to a study done in an afternoon in the following way; If you did your research in a single afternoon then chances are your results are only valid for that afternoon.
You want to ask a question? By all means do so...over a number of days...at the same time of day if that's relevant to your study, at different times of day if you're looking for broader patterns.
Brad and I were talking about the difference between "surveys" and "research" and how the two are getting a little cloudy in our "immediate gratification, find it on the web society". Someone walks into a mall and asks a question and publishes the results of their "survey". Okay. Please appreciate that the value of the results diminishes exponentially over time.
You can read about my thoughts on doing a little research in I did a little research...
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
I'll be speaking at the San Francisco April '07 Emetrics Summit on Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing on May 7, 2007. Come on by and say hello.
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