Gathering data with text, video, or screenshots

- Now we get to the nitty-gritty. How exactly can we collect data from our customers with mobile diary studies? What methods can we use to get text responses, screenshots or videos? There are a number of ways you can collect data virtually with a mobile diary study. Let's walk through some examples so that you can choose the format that's going to work best for your research goals. For starters, mobile diary studies can absolutely collect data with a series of surveys. That means you can have participants take a quick survey over and over in the span of a few days. For example, you could ask participants to take the survey every time they shop for dog food over the next three days. Text messages can be a quick way to prompt users to talk about their journey throughout the day. For example, let's say you want to plot a customer's experience at a live event. You can text them several times throughout the day and ask them what they're doing right now at the event and who they're participating with or maybe you want to know what apps or productivity tools they're using during their work day. Ask them to text you a screenshot of what they're doing at the moment and do this at various times throughout the day. Apps like PACO can also encourage participants to answer survey questions with push notifications and enable uploads of videos, screenshots and survey data. I ran a study for Google using this app where we asked hundreds of participants eight times a day at random times what was the last thing they searched for? And where did they search? You can also encourage participants to send you screenshots. For instance, let's say you wanted to know more about a customer who's really into skincare routines. You might set up a survey with the instructions every time you look for skincare products or get advice on your phone, take a screenshot of what you're looking at, upload it to the survey and write about what you were doing. One of my favorite data gathering techniques to incorporate is video. With video diary studies, you're getting video insights that document the raw human experiences and observations. This is such a rich form of qualitative research that gives you insights into the environment the person is in as well as any behavior or feedback you might not get from a quantitative study. However, as a remote option, this form of ethnography is cost-effective and scalable. You can get ethnographic research from hundreds of participants within a day and digital tools in AI transcription make it manageable to analyze this data in a quantitative way. With this combination of video with your mobile diary studies, you're getting the best of both worlds between qualitative and quantitative research. Companies that use any of these methods are getting to know their customers on a deeper level and starting to understand the emotions, attitudes and behaviors that drive their experience all while collecting loads of data so we understand what's true across a large population of customers.