James Tattersfield
International qualitative research delivery & management
Services
Polar Insight helps companies understand the complex needs of citizens and communities so they can design, bid for, and deliver better services.
Our services can broadly be split into three categories:
1. Designing Solutions
Service Design and Bidding
We help our clients negotiate and win better contracts through uncovering understanding, insights and evidence that:
- Supports their solution design by evidencing what service users want and what works for them.
- Evidences co-production.
- Provides headline or detailed quotes and representative data for bid submissions.
2. Delivering Value
Operations and Continuous Improvement
We help our clients collect evidence about their existing services by:
- Establishing robust and innovative feedback mechanisms that encourage ongoing innovation.
- Accessing and evidencing additional key statistics to support your existing Management Information.
- Building research capacity within operational teams.
3. Measuring Progress
Evaluation and Social Value
We evaluate live services before the end of their contract terms to gather lessons learned as well as measure social value in line with the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. This could include:
- Understanding what users would like to see next.
- Measuring distance travelled - you said, we did.
- Assessing wider economic, environmental and social benefits to uncover new opportunities.
We can help with:
RESEARCH PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT
We use non-traditional techniques to identify and connect with the people and communities your organisation cares about.
SURVEYS & QUANTITATIVE STUDIES
Building a representative panel of users or customers and surveying them is a perfect way to gauge service appeal, price sensitivity and customer experience.
USER JOURNEY MAPPING
Mapping how and why people interact with your service, in what order and alongside which other services enables you to design solutions that solve problems simply and efficiently.
SERVICE USER FOCUS GROUPS
We bring together small groups of relevant, fully screened users or customers to explore and test new or existing ideas and services.
IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS
We conduct intimate, one to one interviews with customers or users to form a deep understanding of their context.
SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS
We use up to date open source intelligence techniques help you understand what the individuals and communities you are interested in are speaking about online.
USER PERSONAS & SEGMENTATION
Different users require different solutions. We’ll help you segment them into practical groups and identify differences so you can design and deliver your service with them in mind.
RESEARCH FILMS
Capturing communities on film, often in their homes, gives you an immersive understanding of the context within which they are interacting with a service.
ETHNOGRAPHY AND MYSTERY SHOPPING
Understanding how people interact with your service or similar services is critical for good design and continuous improvement. We’ll observe, surface insights and provide recommendations.
Speciality
Polar specialises in rapid turnaround projects that require quick results.
If we're unable to deliver a project on our own, we'll engage and manage freelance talent through our international support network, ResearchOS.
This enables us to keep our business lean and agile, saving you money.
We're passionate about purposeful projects with brands, government and the third sector and have experience delivering projects across all three.
Background
Polar Insight is owned and operated by James Tattersfield and supported by a world class group of client-side and agency-side advisors.
James has a background in international research and strategic communication.
Before setting up Polar, he was Managing Partner of Miroma Venture's creative agency, TwelveA.M. and Head of Strategy at Latimer Group where he ran international research projects for brands, broadcasters and governments.