The ICG's egroup is a real gem of a resource. It consistently scores highest as the most valuable aspect of membership in our annual members' survey. You can read Guy Consterdine's (our moderator) story of the history of the group here - definitely worth a read, even if you think you know what the group is all about.
Summer on the egroup
Despite being holiday time, it’s been a busy couple of months on the egroup. We’ve had all types of enquiries from recommendations for recruiters, technical help, academic and methodological definitions to some anecdotes to cheer us up (seemingly ICG on Twitter is Independent Christian Geeks – apologies for any confusion, we’re @TheICG). Highlights for me included :
- A debate on whether it’s a good idea for mac-based Microsoft Office users to upgrade their operating system to Lion yet or not
- Reasons to give your partner when making the “business” case for buying an iPad (when you’ve already got an iPhone and a laptop)
- Mobile phone networks – experience of coverage and customer service of ‘3’ in particular
- Diagnosing why a member’s Powerpoint presentation was opening with changed formatting and fonts in their client’s version
- Tips and hints on how to recruit purchasers of a very minority series of book titles
Ben Lovejoy answered our curiousity about heuristics ...
There's been much talk about researchers as consultants, and ICGer Ben Lovejoy has demonstrated an interesting approach to this: using his extensive experience of website usability studies to offer a simple, low-cost consultancy product.
Heuristic analysis uses existing understanding of consumer responses to provide quick and cost-effective feedback on the usability of a website. Other ICGers no doubt have equal expertise in their own fields, so perhaps this could be the start of a trend?
Ben's intoduction to heuristic analysis can be found here...
Lynne Foster asked the egroup a question ...
Another of our members – Lynne Foster – posted a query for hints and tips on eliciting spontaneous associations in the context of concepts such as 'natural', healthy', 'wholesome' to help her write a proposal. This is her description of what happened next ….
The choice : Sainsbury's or the office?
It was the usual self-employed market researcher weekend. You know the sort. ‘I’ll just check my emails for 5 minutes and finish off that proposal the client wants Monday then I’ll get the food shopping done and put the washing in”.
Lunch comes and goes, afternoon disappears, the evening just begins – so where did that go then? I had got stuck in the PC time portal, again. And I still haven’t finished that proposal and it looks like it’s going to be a takeaway and no clean knickers for me.
Monday dawned bright and I had no inspiration at all – and the proposal was needed end of play. I needed help and fast – but who was about?
I know it's not rocket science but I wanted some advice about interesting ways of eliciting, in focus groups, consumer understanding of various food terminology – things like wholesome, organic, healthy, good for you.
How to produce a stand-out wow!
But I was up against a number of other research agencies for the job and I know that what clients often like is for researchers to include unusual and different techniques in the topic guide. Wow them I thought – do something really different - and then my brain went blank.
I needn’t have worried. A quick post on the ICG forum and ideas came thick and fast:
- use mood boards
- get them to make up a collage before the groups and bring it along
- ask them to liken the terms to celebrities
- buy lots of product and get them to sort into groups reflecting the terminology
- word association
- sentence completion
- the planet game, role play (not sure about planet wholesome Lynne – ed)
- even semiotic techniques
The ideas came with helpful examples of how members had themselves used these techniques to solve similar issues in the past.
And the result was …
In the event I went with a couple of member ideas. The product grouping technique I have used before and find extremely helpful. It ‘grounds’ the respondents and keeps the discussion focused on the product category and contextualised.
The planet game I have not actually used so I incorporated this too into the topic guide. Unfortunately pre group tasks were out due to client imposed timing issues.
By end of play the proposal was completed and submitted and - the icing on the cake - the client rang the next day to sign off the job. Bostin! (Look it up, its Potteries dialect)
An egroup hug …
I just cannot recommend the ICG forum highly enough.
In 30 years of self imposed exile – just me and the computer and some long, lonely days and nights sweating over proposals and de-briefs – it’s wonderful to have people I can turn to who actually understand what I do.
My hubby, bless his cotton socks, is a whizz with the old IT and being a self employed plumber, he is pretty whizzy with bathrooms too. But when it comes to running focus groups his whizziness gets up and goes I’m afraid.
It’s so good to have all that advice and knowledge and practical help at my fingertips. No matter the problem be it a research issue or a dilemma in running the business, someone somewhere has already been there, seen it, done it and got the proverbial T shirt – and is happy to share their experience with me.
What a tremendous resource - and what fun!