Following on from my last post – 2012 Resolutions for the Market Research Agencies – I wanted to talk more about how we make these resolutions a reality by creating new agency roles with distinctive new skills sets.

1. Technologist

The MRX Technologist is primarily responsible for keeping up to date with new digital trends and is able to help the agency develop and pilot new research methodologies. This may take the form of designing new platforms from scratch or being the lead decision maker when it comes to buying 3rd party software. Alongside innovation, the Technologist plays an increasingly important role on project teams where the research briefs are UX or Service Design Orientated.
Skills: User Experience, Digital Project Management, Data Analytics

2. Community Manager

Communities are social places and need to be nurtured by people who are experts in digital communication. With the rise of MROC’s the fastest growing role in MRX agencies is that of the community manager. In fact, most of the problems associated with bad MROC research is when the agency does not have this person on the team. The Community Manager is responsible for setting the rules of the community, setting the tone of voice, making a personal connection with members and ultimately ensuring good quality engagement with the project. The Community Manager is also increasingly leading the way when it comes to applying game mechanics to research and is growing in influence when it comes to shaping research projects.
Skills: Copywriting, Video production, Project Management

3. Social Media Researcher

Real time social media monitoring is now commonplace but many companies are still struggling to interpret the data and use it to make strategic decisions. This knowledge gap is being filled by The Social Media Researcher who is responsible for developing strategic KPI frameworks for social media tracking programmes and harnesses social media data to help answer adhoc brand, product and comms briefs. The Social Media Researcher is quickly becoming a very important role, as they are both an objective and strategic voice advising clients about the ROI of their growing digital spend.
Skills: Quantitative Research, Qualitative Research, Social Media strategy

4. Co-creation Consultants

Companies are opening up and embracing more collaborative ways of working with third parties – including their consumers. Co-creation Consultants are responsible for the successful interaction between all parties on a project. Many of the touch points for this type of co-creation occur in workshop environments of one kind or another that require very skilled facilitation to get the best out of a wide variety of participants. Co-creation Consultants cover a wide range of disciplines, most often those from innovation, brand strategy and planning backgrounds.
Skills: Facilitation & improvisation, Planning, Qualitative Research

5. Big Data Scientists

We are living in the age of data, enabling companies to be more forward looking. Big Data Scientists are hot property in the research world as they are responsible for developing predictive data models & algrorithms using a wide range of data sources including dynamic social media data. Big Data Scientists primarily come from computer science, hard sciences, engineering and business backgrounds.
Skills: Mathmatics, Statistics, Computer programming

In 1980 Alvin Toffler wrote of the “Third Wave“. Following on from the Neolithic Revolution, when agriculture developed to replace hunter-gatherer societies, and the much more recent Industrial Revolution – the second wave – the Third Wave was at that time in the process of obliterating the second wave society. At the time it didn’t have a name, but now it’s known as the Information Revolution or Age of Information ( a name which has seeped into popular culture), the period in which the world is no longer led by economies based around manufacture but by information economies which specialise in innovation, finance and services.

A by-product of this information flooded world is the rise of the new amateur, or the ProAm. The ProAm blurs the distinctions between the professional & the amateur by feeding off the highly accessible information online to pursue amateur interests to a professional standard. The ability to self-publish means that these amateurs often feed off information from other amateurs. The rise of the food blogging community and, by extension, the supper club trend is a great example of the freedom of knowledge sharing from one enthusiastic amateur to the next. No longer are cookbooks from qualified, experienced chefs the only source of information for culinary information – instead you can Google any recipe and be confronted by blogs and opinions on the first page.

I should declare an interest beyond my work as community manager here at Face. I am one of these New Amateurs in the food space, as I pursue my interest in cookery and restaurants through my blog. My experience has been an encouraging one, as the feedback from the wider “foodie” community through Twitter and comments has been both positive and constructive. In a matter of months I feel I’ve learned more about both the technical and cultural aspects of food than I could by reading any number of “expert” publications.

It is the rise of these New Amateurs, these ProAms, which has enabled us to work in the way we do. Co-creation depends upon people who aren’t experts in the conventional sense, but who have a better inherent understanding of the brand in question due to living in the world where the brand has relevance. As community manager I have been taken aback again and again by how savvy the consumers we work with are and how deep their understanding of branding, marketing and innovation runs.

The good news is that this trend is only just beginning as the “digital native” generation comes into its own. As those of us who have grown up around these enabling technologies become the new impetus for business, it’s going to be more important than ever to include the demographic in the development of new ideas and insights, particularly as another side effect of more readily available information is a cynicism about any perceived preaching or one-sided selling from brands. This is a new audience which expects to be talked to rather than at and listened to in turn. Simply shouting about your brand won’t work any more. In 2011, you need a conversation, not a sermon.

Chris Poole gave a great key note presentation at SXSW talking about the evolution of the infamous meme making bulletin board 4chan - once described by The Guardian as “lunatic, juvenile… brilliant, ridiculous and alarming”.

4chan is one of the ugliest sites you will come across but it gets 12million users per month and has 1 million registers users. So what is the key to its popularity?

1. It is a simple concept. Upload an image and a comment and see if other people interact with your content.

2. Unlike social networks, users of the site are anonymous and have a freedom to play and express themselves in ways you just can’t on Facebook…hence some of the adult material uploaded but more significantly the large amount of art criticism on the board.

3. Only the most engaging content stays on the site meaning that people encourage others to play, comment on and adapt their content.

Poole’s next move is updating the 4chan concept by launching Canvas http://canv.as/. On Canv.as all users are given photoshop quality tools to encourage them to be more creative and it  also removes a lot of the barriers to mass participation associated with 4chan.

What struck me about the success of 4chan is how it has managed to create the perfect environment for innovation. A stripped back environment where ideas are more important than the creators and where those ideas can spread and grow without egos getting in the way. What I really like about the new Canvas concept is the potential it has to democratise crowd creativity and as someone who works in the field of innovation I find this very exciting.

A few years ago, I used to do a bit of comedy: I remember we put on a couple of classic French plays based on comedia del arte and one year we even created and presented a whole show based on improvisation (I swear it worked and was a great success!)

The rules of improv and comedia are similar: participants have a frame or a canvas and a few elements, but the canvas is blank and participants have to write the story.

This technique is now largely used in participative design to get the most out of the participants’ creativity.

Now I’m wondering how we can get to the next level of user empowerment.

For instance, could users or participants be involved in an interactive storyline, either in the way a social website is built or maybe, in a more specific context, in the way a research community project is held?

Why do it?

When I was at uni, we had this class called “Complexity”. Apart from lots of boring hours of lectures, we had a very practical exercise in which we analysed a complex situation and interviewed its participants. Within my group, we chose to check out the complex world of playing chess. There are methods and techniques but also a whole bunch of parameters that cannot be foreseen or analysed and mathematically resolved: for example the kind of psychological tricks you find in both chess and poker.

The world is complex: you do not know the answer to the problems we are facing. A bunch of really cool people, the self-proclaimed Bucket Brigade, give a great explanation of this fact and suggest a casual loop model to tackle the complex issues.

As you can see this method involves variables (could be our participants, their background, the stimulus, and the context e.g online community) and cause-consequences (between all the variables mentioned).

Adding a bit of complexity to the story

Back in the 80s and 90s, geeky kids were already enjoying the earliest examples of interactive storytelling with the glorious “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of books.

To cut a long story short, you start reading the book like any other but at the end of each chapter or sequence of the story, you, the reader, are asked to choose between a couple of actions. You are then redirected to the page or chapter that will tell the consequences of your decisions. In these books the reader is the hero and you may die (or lose) before completing the book. This sounds quite a lot like a paper-based video game, doesn’t it?

Everybody’s buzzing about it and game mechanics can encourage participation so I wonder whether we could do the same with online communities.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly news

The bad news is that unless you’ve got a fair amount of disposable cash, it’s going to be hard to build a platform that has as much flexibility in the flow of interfaces and actions as in real life.

Therefore, at Face, we decided to give as much flexibility to the tools participants are using on our online communities as possible, and increase the fluidity of the task flow in order to give them a greater choice. And the good news is that, I believe these things have added a certain degree of complexity to our platforms.

However, to me, the ugly news comes from The Last Psychiatrist (don’t get me wrong, I love this blog!). In this article the author tells the story of a guy who was out with his girlfriend and got beaten up by a 17 year old.

One of the comments reads:

My purpose in using these scenarios is to lead you to realize that “what would you do if…?” is an impossible question because a situation doesn’t happen to you, you are the situation.

Basically if You meets Future You, then either you are (both) locked in the psychiatric ward or you’ve created a space-time warp and the world is going to implode soon (or has imploded already)

In other words, It’s quite impossible to build a Choose Your Own Life in an online community.

So what’s the point?

I think the point in adding complexity to our online communities and the way we design online tasks is to empower users. They already know what they like and what they want and who they are, our goal is to make sure they can fully express it, not necessarily by creating something new but by simply allowing them to be themselves.

Another great bonus is that giving them maximum flexibility in the storyline they want to follow should give a great leverage to their engagement. As Peter Bergman explains in his blog post, the highest motivation comes only at the right time:

“What’s important is that your moment of choice is when you are in the right state of mind — when you need the least willpower — to make the best decision.”

Following on from yesterdays look at gamification, socialisation and experiential, here is part 2 of our look at The Future of Research Communities:

Co-creation

The essence of co-creation is brands, agencies and consumers working together, at the same time, towards a shared goal. At the moment through tools such as online focus groups and message boards all stakeholders can work together, share information in real time and collaborate.

However again, if co-creation is going to evolve online it needs to break free from web 2.0 and new tools need to be created. Google Wave gave us a hint, albeit very complicated, about how working together online could potentially work.

This technology is obviously still in its infancy and needs a serious clean up if it is going to become mainstream and universally useable. However the thought behind it, a group of people working in a stream of consciousness, editing, sharing and collaborating instantly, is exactly what is needed for co-creation to evolve online.

This kind of approach means that a whole group of people can work together at an arranged time or co-creators can dip in, leave their feedback, build their ideas and then dip out, at a convenient time for them.

Co-creation is going to embed itself in traditional research techniques and the online co-creation tools need to catch up with the fresh, innovative offline approach.

Building

Whether it’s for traditional research, co-creation or crowdsourcing online, respondents are often asked “If you could create your perfect “insert type of product here” what would it be like?”

For those answering this can be a very difficult process. Trying to describe what you are imagining in your head is not easy. This is why tools that allow users to fully release their creative thinking should be developed and implemented. Giving people the chance to fully articulate themselves leads to better ideas being developed and better insights exposed.

As online tools develop, creative outlets will improve, which should be snapped up by research communities instantly. Basic creative functionality such as paint tools is the start to this but when working creatively users shouldn’t be pigeon holed into giving a set type of response.

They should be able to respond however they want to, whether that is creating something within the community, uploading from their own tools, describing ideas in text or a combination of all.

A submitted idea should be like a scrapbook: influences, thoughts, ideas, feedback and final submission. Covering every angle of the creative process getting as much insight, innovation and creativity as possible.

Realism

Online research communities are artificial environments in which we discuss and debate real life. Users are asked to describe their behaviour, attitude, decision-making process and thoughts towards certain subjects. The gap between the environment and reality needs to be closed in order for results to be as real and natural as they possibly can.

For a long time community members have been telling us what they think rather than showing us how they feel. This needs to change. By sending community members out into their worlds and allowing them to report back will bring a much deeper level of insight and understanding.

We should be giving audiences time (and tools) to consider responses in real life before they download their experiences and feelings in to the community. This will allow agencies and brands to get under the skin of a subject rather than just receiving superficial thoughts.

Tasks need to be integrated to increase depth and bring real behaviours, feelings and beliefs to life. This will, in turn, help the industry stop thinking of audiences as ‘consumers’ and start seeing them as people.

Analytics

Online research communities can hold an amazing amount of qualitative data; even the smallest community can generate a massive amount of content. Having access to all this content is great, but often clients would like to just get an overview of what is currently happening in the community and no more. They do not have the time to sift through all the information.

Face’s social media monitoring tool, Pulsar, has pioneering analysis tools that give brands an overview about what is being said about them online. This includes giving clients quick a overview of hot topics, key words, trends, sentiment, volume, who, what and where.

We are now in the process of converting these analysis tools for our client dashboard. This will allow both admin and clients to get a quick and comprehensive summary of what is going on in the community in real-time. Including semantic analysis, network analysis, discourse analysis, statistics and semiotics.

The use of these techniques in research communities will bring instant data visualisations to analysis. This will make digesting all community data easier, bring a bit of science to the platform and add an extra layer of interpretation to help back up assumptions.

As real time social analysis continues to progress so will the output tools for both social media analysis and online community research.

Although much of the above is a long way off in terms of being ready for launch, it does not make it any less exciting. As researchers continue to adapt the latest internet technology for research purposes we should begin to see some really innovative tools entering the arena.

Online research communities are going to be branching out into new and innovative areas and become a much more immersive and interesting environment for users. Which means better ideas, better insights and a better experience for community members, community managers and brand stakeholders alike.

Bring on the future.

We all wait with baited breath to see where the web is going to take us next. The hype surrounding new innovations such as Google Instant or HTML 5 is massive. As users we are not only interested in how the latest departures look and feel, but also how they are going to change our behaviour.

There are those who look at it on a purely personal level – how are these changes going to change my actions? And there are those who look at it from a much wider berth, how are these changes going to influence the web as whole?

As a community manager, when I try out a new user experience my mindset is immediately on whether it can help move online research communities in a new direction. How can a new technology, technique or tool be adapted and used to make a research community more engaging, more intuitive and more interesting for those who use them?

Web 2.0 has been at the core of most research communities from their conception, but as technology and its users move on research communities need to evolve to stay relevant for community members, clients and community managers alike.

So, as we continue to test our reliance on web 2.0 tools and begin to harness technology that allows us to do bigger, brighter and bolder things, where does the future of online research communities lie?

Socialization

When we first started with our online research communities we made the decision that we would not include large social elements. We wanted our communities to focus around co-creation and research, not user interaction and social media. For many reasons this was the right decision, but as the internet has evolved people don’t just want to be sociable, they expect it.

In the early days of Headbox we found that our users who worked on our co-creation projects were finding each other online anyway. Whether it be on Facebook or MySpace users were creating groups, talking about the projects and friend requesting each other, us and our clients!

There was no facilitation on our behalf, the socially proactive nature of young people meant they were going to connect no matter what. So, as our communities have grown so have the social elements, and as social networks evolve, so will research communities user interaction.

This does not mean we are going to be building our own social network. It’s more about allowing people to connect, if they want to. It’s allowing our members to share their information, find the people they are working with and building their own profiles.

As social networking tools and online sociability grow, research communities will continue to incorporate what is suitable, and no more.

Gamification

As Marion explained in her earlier #ResCom101 blog using gaming mechanics is an obvious way to increase engagement and interest. Developing league tables, points systems and badge rewards seem like a no-brainer, they make everything more fun and rewarding for users. However, this isn’t gaming for the sake of gaming, this is gaming for the sake of research.

Rivalries and competition will definitely increase the enjoyment levels for users but there is a strong chance that results may get skewed. If community members start to post responses just to take part in gaming aspects then you are not going to receive the research output you need.

Gaming mechanics will begin to play a big part in research communities but it needs to be a subtle, intelligent approach. Whether it is keeping users rewards/badges private to them or having an intelligent points system, you need to make sure that users aren’t acting unnaturally due to gaming elements.

As well as engaging users, gamification and its rewards can also help when incentivizing users, as Marion points out, sometimes the most basic rewards can be the most fulfilling.

Experiential

In research communities the reception of information is crucial. As well as being engaging, tasks need to be easy to understand or there could be confusion. If users lose interest when receiving the task the results suffer. If there is a lot of block text to read or a lot of repetition, community members are well within their right to get bored.

People prefer to intake information if it is visual, audio or both. It is a lot easier and a lot more entertaining.

Video briefings are brilliant and can cover a lot of information very quickly. Teaming task copy with physically showing users what you would like them to do is always an easy way to make sure there can be no confusion about what is expected. At the moment video briefings seem to be an every now and again thing, this will increase and they should become normal practice for community managers.

Producing engaging, visually orientated Slidecasts that allow community members to intake information as they please is one way of communicating lots information in an interesting way.

HTML 5 will begin to play a big part in this, its ability to create clean, interesting, flexible and interactive applications will help research communities move away from Web 2.0 and allow community developers more creativity when designing task formats.

The evolution of entertaining briefings and tasks revolves around users being able to complete tasks whilst they’re being briefed. Integrating visuals and the ability for users to complete tasks as they go, and at their most engaged, will make it a much more entertaining and seamless experience for users.

This is not something that is going to happen overnight but it is the direction in which online research communities are moving.

Part 2, which will be published on Friday, will be focussing on co-creation, building, realism and analytics.

To check out past posts from the Research Communities 101 click here

Well… almost equally…

The following list is our Top 5 most viewed SlideShare presentations of 2010:

1) What Is Co-creation and Why Do It?

Saul’s presentation explaining what co-creation is and how to utilise its power was our most viewed presentation this year gaining over 2, 000 views. It is a great introduction in to the world of co-creation, so if you want to know exactly what we here at Face do give it a read!

2. Co-creating Insights

Second in our list is Philip and Beth from Coca-Cola’s presentation from this years MRS Annual Conference. It explores our ongoing work with Coca-Cola and how we have used co-creative techniques to find deeper, more meaningful insight.

3. Real Time Collaborative Methodologies in Market Research

Francesco and Sharmila’s presentation from our little trip to Oxford is up next on the list. Real Time Collaborative Methodologies in Market Research explores the web at the moment and how we, as a research agency, are plug into it.

4. Designing Relevance

In October Fran was joined on stage by Tom Crawford from Nokia to at the Esomar Online Research conference in Berlin. Their presentation Designing Relevance: How Open and Agile Research Methodologies Can Help Complex Organisations Stay Relevant focuses on the open innovation process we used to complete a recent project with Nokia.

5. Journey To The Centre Of The Crowd and Back Again

Crowdsourcing is a buzzword that has been flying round over the last few years, during that time its role has adapted and developed. This presentation revolves around crowdsourcing for new product development, how to do it and what the benefits are!

And finally…

9 Lives

We couldn’t really show our most popular presentations of this year without sharing Sharmila’s excellent 9 Lives Prezi presentation. 9 Lives is the output from a research project we undertook in June focusing on the shrinking 16-24 demographic. We commissioned nine young people to make films about what their lives are like in the year 2010… here is what they had to say:

Monday’s Top 5 will be focusing on the Face teams favourite moments on 2010… see you then!

The Communities Team

Responsibilities:

• Liaising with all teams involved in the community process
• Creating a consistent tone of voice for the community
• Helping the research team create task plan
• Creating rapport with community members
• Assisting research team with top-line analysis
• First point of contact for all community members

The community team is the lynchpin in the whole online research community process. It is the job of the community team to make sure they are in constant contact with all the other teams and have a complete overview of the project.

The client team should have a direct relationship with the community team, for any technical, general or community related questions. However, the research team should remain the main point of client contact.

Many things remain the same when moving from community project to community project. However the way you address a new community has to change every time a new project begins.

Every community is going to be different. You have to talk to your community members in a way personal to them or you will not get the most out of them. For instance, a community consisting of 100 sport-loving 16 year olds will have to be treated in a completely different way to a community of 30 tech savvy mums.

It sounds like an obvious procedure but it can be really easy to keep the same voice throughout all community activity.

The tone that is set needs to be consistent, this why the community team need to be involved in the building of the task plan. It is a community manager’s job to look over the task plan and make sure it is suitable for the audience.

The community team’s role with the research team should not end when the task plan is signed off though. As they are the closest team to the community it is an obvious step to involve them in the analysis and results.

The community team should be responsible for reporting top-line feedback and themes to the research team, helping them analyse the overall feeling of community members and general statistics (number of posts etc).

The most important role of the community team is to build and gel the community. It is gaining rapport with users and bringing the environment to life that is the most difficult task and will take up the majority of the community teams time.

Making sure that there is always activity within the community and all users queries/problems are resolved quickly is key to building a successful online research community.

Essentially the community team’s role is a balancing act. You are the voice of the client and research team when speaking to the community and you are the voice of the community when speaking to client and research team. The balance has to be kept to ensure that everyone involved in the community is satisfied.

All the roles discussed in this series can be flexible depending on the brief and size of the community project. However, making sure you have a strong process in place when building an online research community is essential to make sure the focus remains on the research rather than any technical or logistical issues.

Thanks for reading!

The Production Team

Responsibilities

• Preparing and implementing sample screener
• Recruiting community members
• Briefing recruitment partners
• Supporting community team with user issues
• Rewarding users

When a research community project is commissioned the first team that springs into action is the production team. As soon as they are briefed with demographics and sample size the production team should set out to find the best people they can to participate in the community.

A screener is devised and implemented by the production team, this ensures that demographic is correct before moving to the next stage of recruitment, usually a phone interview.

When the sample is recruited the production team will hand over communication to the community team. This should not be where the production teams role ends though. The production team should assist the community team with the integration of the sample into the research environment.

When a group of users are first introduced to a community there will always be issues (mainly technical). As the production team will already have a relationship with users they should help with any initial problems.

If necessary the production team can help with issues throughout the whole process but generally the start is the only time when they will be required.

The production team should also be in charge of rewarding users when the community project has come to an end. The community team should keep track of users achievements and then pass the information onto the production team when the community has finished.

Next week we will be exploring the last team of the series, The Communities Team.

As part of our ongoing Research Communities 101 series we are taking a look at the roles and responsibilities that need to be fulfilled for an online research community to be successful. Today we’re focusing on the research team, who are very much the brains behind the operation!

The Research Team

Responsibilities:

• Overseeing the community project
• Defining the community matrix
• Working alongside the client to define the community goal
• Devising the task plan and the best mix of community tools
• Working with client team to shape the community as it develops
• Analysing the community output and reporting back to clients

The research team begin the process; they will receive the brief and have the majority of the early contact with the client. When answering the brief the research team will make recommendations about what the community matrix should be. The community matrix is the foundations of the community and covers the following elements:

• How many markets will be covered
• Length of community
• Quantity of users
• Demographics of users

All of these elements should be covered in the initial response to the client along with recommendations. Recommendations can include whether any special techniques or tasks will be necessary (video diaries, online focus groups etc) and how the client team can best engage with community outputs.

All recommendations should be based on requirements and budget. After the matrix is agreed on and the community is signed off it is up to the research team to inform the technical, recruitment and community teams so logistics work can begin.

The research team will then work alongside the client and define exactly what is wanted and needed from the research – What is the goal of the community? After the initial work with the client is complete and objectives are set it is the job of the research team to create the task plan and the range of tools required.

Each task plan is created bespoke on the basis of the project objective. It’s designed specifically with the community members in mind, ensuring that they have a great and engaging experience. Audience and local market issues are factored in to both the overall design ad the final tone and copy.

The research team works alongside both the community managers and clients when devising it. Of course this is especially important when working in many markets with many different languages and cultures.

Once the task plan is completed it is sent to the client for changes, amendments and sign off. When the task plan is signed off the research team take a backseat until the community begins and analysis starts.

Depending on the length of the community and what is decided with the client it is then up to the research team to report back intermittently with community updates. These can be either simple handovers of information or feed into the iterative development of the community. These reports act as a starting point when entering the final analysis and debriefing process.

Throughout the project the research team should be seen as the first point of contact for clients and stakeholders. They can filter the information to the rest of the teams. It is good to have just one point of contact for the client; avoiding confusion and controlling the flow of information.

Check back on Monday for the next installment: The Client Team.