research communities

It’s an age-old question: What is the consumer thinking? Market research online communities and online research panels are methods of uncovering consumers’ preferences, motivations, and opinions. Market researchers often use the terms interchangeably, but there are differences in their size, structure, and use.

A few years ago, a client approached us about fielding their annual insights survey among financial advisors. We suggested a different approach to find the market research sweet spot for financial services.

The typical market research study includes large sample sizes and lots of data points. A quantitative focus like this has its place, but usually not in usability testing.

Following a few simple best practices when taking a survey will allow you to provide meaningful, valuable responses. Thoughtful survey feedback can help companies make informed business decisions to meet the needs of the consumers they serve.

It takes time and effort to design a good survey. Whether you want to get the pulse on a specific touchpoint or understand what drives your consumers to, you want to ensure your survey respondents will provide you with valuable data.

The term "ethical research" seems pretty straightforward, so why is it such a contentious topic of conversation among researchers? Just apply what your mother taught you to your research design, right? Well, not exactly.

As a usability testing moderator, you have a responsibility to your stakeholders to observe participant behavior and collect verbal feedback. But moderators also have a responsibility for managing the participant's experience and comfort during the session.

We often think of user experience (UX) testing as an accompaniment to design work. While that is certainly true, UX design and testing should be approached holistically. There are three phases in which UX research should be conducted — exploratory, design, and validation.

Since our original post on March 20 assessing survey response rates immediately after the COVID-19 travel ban, we've been closely following response rates and data impacts on several of our trackers, in both the utility and financial services spaces. Now, in Week 6 of the quarantine, we need to know if people have continued responding to survey invitations at the same rate.