Part 2
The world’s top companies are using agile video feedback to build great brands, products, and experiences.
Video feedback can be extremely powerful, and the experts at Voxpopme have compiled some best practices to help you get the most from your consumer videos for maximum impact in your business.
In this 3-part series, we’re sharing some tips and tricks for asking the right questions, what to look for in your video analysis, and how to craft a powerful story with the findings to engage your business and direct key strategies.
By the end of this series, you’ll leave with actionable nuggets that you can integrate into your research program and become even more of a research rockstar than you already are!
Let’s get this party started
According to Chaos & Problem Solving in Qualitative Analysis, “Problem solving is a “messy process” and no less so when carrying out an analysis of qualitative data. ”Qual analysis borrows from many social science schools to help with this interpretation; psychology, ethnography, sociology, behavioural economics, and others are designed to provide a framework to help explain why people are thinking, feeling, and behaving as they are.
To kick off part 2 of our Visionary’s Handbook, here is a further excerpt from Chaos & Problem Solving in Qualitative Analysis which sets us up to understand what we’re getting ourselves into when approaching qualitative data, and what we can ultimately get out of it:
There are several articles in Research Design Review that touch on the messiness of qualitative analysis. In particular, “The Messy Inconvenience of Qualitative Analysis” underscores the idea that:
“Unlike the structured borders we build into our quantitative designs that facilitate an orderly analytical process, qualitative research is built on the belief that there are real people beyond [these borders] and that rich learning comes from meaningful conversations. But the course of a meaningful conversation is not a straight line. The course of conversation is not typically one complete coherent stream of thought followed by an equally well-thought-out rejoinder”
Put differently, qualitative analysts must endure a certain amount of chaos if they are to achieve their goal of bringing some semblance of “order” to their narrative. It is their ability to embrace the tangled web of human thought and interaction that allows qualitative researchers to unravel the most complex problem of all – how people think or do the things they do.
This is part of the reason why qualitative analysis remains such a mystery. Qualitative analysis requires a conscious effort to accept some chaos, to not rush the march to find order in the data, and to feel comfortable in the notion that this process will lead to meaningful outcomes.
Moving from masses of verbatim and soft data to the key insights is the magic but can be difficult to fathom. Whilst qualitative video analysis is similar to traditional qual analysis, the use of tech, AI and algorithms allows a different, more rigorous process to uncover structure in the chaos.
Back to those objectives… again
First, it’s important to understand the background and core objective for your qualitative research. The background and objectives provide a clear direction or framework for the analysis by defining the context, focus, and the right lens. Understand your:
Audience
- Consider the background from the POV of your internal stakeholders
Methodology
Who did you talk to?
- Gender
- Age/generations Location
- HHI
- Marital status
- Employment status
- Children in household
- Other
Who did you ask?
How many questions were asked and what were they?
Background & Objectives
Is there any background information you should be aware of?
- Previous studies/findings
- Ongoing supplemental research
What are your objectives?
- What is the most important of these objectives?
What are your standards for success?
How will this research be used in your organization?
- What kinds of decisions will be made based on this information?
Creating a wireframe for your analysis
Now that you understand your background and objectives, write them down. For example, we were seeking to understand the impact of the recently announced ASDA/Sainsbury’s merger, in particular how it would affect consumer perceptions and behavior.
Specifically, we were interested in finding answers to the following:
- Initial reactions to the idea of the merger?
-
Is it a good or poor decision and why?
What changes will take place because of the merger?
How will the merger affect consumers shopping behavior?
50 supermarket shoppers in England and Scotland engaged in a four question, self-led qualitative video study.
- Age: 20 - 75 years
- Mix of both male and female
- Had previously heard of the merger
- Who did you ask?
This is what we heard...
- PLACEHOLDER - INSERT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- PLACEHOLDER - INSERT KEY FINDING 1
- PLACEHOLDER - INSERT KEY FINDING 2
- PLACEHOLDER - INSERT KEY FINDING 3
- PLACEHOLDER - INSERT CLOSING SUMMARY
Formulating your hypothesis
There are two schools of thought when it comes to hypotheses within qualitative analysis, and the Voxpopme platform can support both.
Explorers
Explorers let the data do the talking rather than predicting outcomes - they keep the lens from the background/objectives front of mind and then leverage our word cloud, Theme Explorer, and Sentiment looking for anything key, unexpected, interesting, confusing, etc. But more on those tools later...
Planners
Planners formulate hypotheses before beginning analysis. They might ask self reflection questions like : using your knowledge of background and methodology, create educated predictions - what themes do you anticipate to pop up? Now X is ready to leverage our Word Cloud, Theme Explorer, and Sentiment looking for those key, unexpected, interesting, and/or confusing pieces of data.
Analyzing video feedback to discover key insights
Next, let’s begin analyzing your videos. Below are the tools within the Voxpopme platform that can help you do that.
1. Auto-video summarization
Using our theme analytics and sentiment analysis, we generate an automatic video summary and identified unique themes based on your video responses.
Note: The order of operations may vary depending on the type of project (i.e. your analysis does not need to be done in the order shown). For example, concept testing may begin with sentence level sentiment analysis looking at the positives and negatives to understand what is working and what is not, versus journey mapping may begin with theme explorer to understand the broad landscape of your most relevant themes.
2. Review the Word Cloud
Our Word Cloud tool is a really simple way to get an overview of the content you have. Some words may jump out at you not just because they are large/frequent but because they are confusing, unexpected, interesting, etc. Clicking on them allows you to see the data driving them and can easily be dumped into ‘buckets’ (i.e. notes, lists) as a first cut of things that are relevant and can be perused later for more detail.
3. Use Theme Explorer to understand the broad landscape of your most relevant themes
Toggling from Most Mentions to Top Picks allows you to look at the unique themes that have cropped up.
Within Theme Explorer, look at the information as a whole, and then use the filter tool to look at the information individually (i.e. different steps in a journey map). What do you notice?
Note: The order of operations may vary depending on the type of project (i.e. your analysis does not need to be done in the order shown). For example, concept testing may begin with sentence level sentiment analysis looking at the positives and negatives to understand what is working and what is not, versus journey mapping may begin with theme explorer to understand the broad landscape of your most relevant themes.
4. Leverage Sentiment Analysis
This allows you to understand the emotion behind the themes you are seeing - you now have a good understanding of what people are discussing and how they are discussing it.
You can view sentiment at the project level, response level, sentence level, and theme level. You can also use the filter tool to narrow your focus, just like within Theme Explorer.
Sentiment can be especially helpful for concept tests. Looking for the positive comments provides insight as to what is working, and the negative comments can shine a light on what’s holding the concept back.
As you leverage the Voxpopme tools, keep the following questions top-of-mind:
- What are some important themes?
- What information do you already know that you can add to the new information?
- What meaningful connections can you make with existing knowledge?
- What aligns with hypotheses? What doesn’t?
- How are themes related?
- Are there any pieces of information in opposition?
- Are there any patterns or trends where I can establish relationships between and among pieces of information?
- Identify gaps in the information, what assumptions can I make? What is being implied, but not explicitly stated?
- What areas of opportunity can I highlight?
Earmarking the best videos to include in your showreel
It’s important that you can remember and easily reference the video snippets that led you to your conclusions.
There are once again two schools of thought when it comes to earmarking the best videos to include in your showreel. As you leverage the VPM tools above to analyze the videos, you can consider the below to help you more easily come back to them later for inclusion in your showreel.
Let’s again refer to our Explorers vs. Planners. Explorers like to build their showreel post-analysis, and Planners like to build as they go. Once again, our platform can support both schools of thought.
If you’re an explorer, you might want to:
Use the Like feature:
- Bookmark videos that you want to easily come back to.
- Any other person who logs into the project can see your Liked videos, so this is also a helpful trick for leaving a breadcrumb trail for colleagues to view the videos you liked too
Add tags around key areas of interest For example, let’s say you have extracted.
More of a planner? Try:
Creating lists around key areas of interest. Again, let’s say you see the themes ‘design’, ‘functionality’, and ‘price’ emerging - add these videos to different lists to easily come back to them later
Building your outline
Now that you have analyzed your videos, we’re ready to insert your key themes into your outline. Use your key themes and liked/tagged/saved videos to craft sentences outlining the key takeaways, and insert these into your outline. For example,
Most believe the merger will create change, but few believe it will affect their shopping behaviour.
- 4 in 5 believe that change will take place as the result of the merger and relatively few (26%) expect this change to be positive. This might go some way to explain why two-thirds do not expect to alter their shopping habits
Many shoppers were confused by the merger:
This is a sector with a strong sense of image differentiation and there is a real tension around the fit between these two brands
Consumers talked about the challenge of bringing together a higher end quality brand (Sainsbury’s) and a lower end price-driven brand (ASDA)
They wondered whether Sainsbury’s prices, and quality, would fall to be closer to ASDA’s; or whether ASDA’s prices and quality would rise to be closer to Sainsbury’s
Once you’ve inserted your key takeaways, take a step back and ask yourself, so what? What do these findings mean for my customer? It is important to wrap up your report with a conclusion/recommendation to bring it all together.
Revisit your objectives and see how they marry with your findings. Have you addressed the key objectives? Have you answered the questions posed? Do the key takeaways neatly summarize all of your findings? If the answer is yes, then you are ready to build your report.
No one likes a disjointed report! By creating an outline before jumping into report creation, you are ensuring you are putting the analyzed parts together in a way that flows and tells the complete story. If it doesn’t fit the first time, try, try, and try again - because you have written down your outline, you are able to move points around so that it best fits together.
Whats Next?
We hope these best practices were useful for you when considering your approach to writing qualitative research questions for video feedback.
Have more questions? Our team is always on hand to collaborate with you and identify the biggest opportunities to incorporate rich, agile qualitative insight into your research program.
Best Practices for Video Research
Part 1
Writing Amazing Video Questions for Brand and Product Feedback
Part 2
Analyzing Video Feedback to Uncover Hidden Treasure
Part 3
Sharing Consumer Stories for Maximum Impact