To all Qualvu clients, friends and followers,   On behalf of our entire team, I want to wish you the very best this holiday season, and say thanks to all of you that have made 2011 another big year for Qualvu (our 4th year anniversary)!   2011 was quite a ride – here are just some of the highlights:   Qualvu was at the center of the smartphone revolution in qualitative research in 2011: More than 25% of our projects now include smartphone video responses, Read more »

Right out of the gate:  I’ll likely get heat for this blog post.  So as a pre-emptive measure, here’s some background.   Over the past couple of summers at Qualvu we’ve sourced some very talented and motivated college-level interns.  We’re a great gig for them to gain experience in a high growth start-up that blends Internet technology with the qualitative research industry – and who can beat summertime near the Rocky Mountains.  When the interns arrive I’m always anxious to give them cool projects that Read more »

Announcing for the First Time to the Public: The Real Breakthrough InnovationChanging Qualitative Research   There’s been a lot of buzz in the qualitative research industry over the past year about breakthrough, web-based innovations that collect consumer insights in order to drive decision making.  Social network monitoring, online communities, interactive bulletin boards, and webcam interviews are just a few of those gaining attention. But what is the real breakthrough innovation that will forever change the qualitative research game?  We’re betting you’ll be surprised to learn Read more »

Sitting at dinner last night, a friend and I talked about the downfall of Research in Motion (RIM).  Just four years ago, he and I had both just purchased our first Blackberry devices, and were thrilled at their Spartan yet functionally elegant design for the power email users that we both were.  Then, the iPhone appeared, and we both bailed almost immediately from Blackberries to Smartphones.   At the core of the problem seems to be that the Blackberry maker just didn’t listen – or Read more »

The Internet has revolutionized scores of industries and businesses, given birth to new ones (see eBay, Facebook) and written the obituary for others (see newspapers, travel agents). Because a generation or two have grown up on the Internet, and because it is so commonplace, we often don’t realize just how profound its changes have been and how profound they continue to be. One of the great paradoxes of fundamental change is that the people least aware of it are the ones most involved in it. And while it is always risky to say that the Internet has transformed one industry more than others, it is also becoming clearer and clearer that because of the Internet, qualitative research will never be the same.

We’re starting to have some very interesting conversations with several of our clients about using QR codes to trigger “in the moment” qualitative consumer video insights. For those uninitiated, a QR code is short for “quick response” – it’s a cyber inkblot that looks like this: You can download a free QR code reader for your smartphone, and when you point it at these QR codes, they can take you to a website or any web-based experience. So in our case, we can help our Read more »

I had the opportunity to speak to a couple of hundred business owners and decision makers at the Digital Summit 2011 (Twitter #DSUMM11) this week, and I came away with some invigorating impressions. First, small businesses are aggressively embracing online video, in many cases more so than their larger enterprise counterparts. Small to mid-sized firms (SMB) realize the need to execute lean, effective and innovative strategies to connect with their customers, and virtually all the SMB’s I talked to see online video as the critical Read more »

There’s an article I noticed recently about an experiment out of USC that found how people who use Botox are less likely to read others’ emotions. Essentially, people interpret emotions by mimicking the facial movements of others, so if your muscular signals from your face to your brain are dampened, you’re less able to pick up on how people feel while you’re watching them.   I couldn’t help but see the obvious parallel to a crucial difference between text-based qualitative research options, and Qualvu’s unique Read more »

I got asked recently about the most interesting studies Qualvu has done recently, and to be honest, I had a hard time answering. It’s become the norm for us to take clients into virtually unlimited moments and locations that their qualitative inquiries take them.  For those hardcore qualitative researchers out there, and you know who you are, this is crucial to why I believe Qualvu is changing the landscape forever. I know that sounds rather lofty, but think about it this way…   Qualitative research is Read more »

Our engineering team just completed in-field testing of the Qualvu mobile app on the iPad2, and it works like a charm.  First, let me state what everyone who has fiddled with an iPad2 will tell you – the device is jaw-dropping cool, lightweight, and the iOS is lightning fast and as intuitive as thinking.   If you want to know where the PC category is going, take a test drive of the iPad2. If you want to know where the qualitative research category is going, Read more »

I’ve been a researcher; I know what that closet looks like. Boxes and boxes of focus group output, all on DVDs, saved because you just can’t throw away all that valuable data. But let’s face it – how many times have you actually pulled out one of those boxes and watched any of those DVDs after the fact? From my own experience: Not often. Never?   Here’s a new way to eliminate those boxes, and more importantly, get invaluable intelligence from all of that data. Read more »

So what do 750 million consumers globally have in their pockets or purses?   A wallet is a safe bet. In the industrialized world, perhaps a set of car keys.  Maybe a receipt from the bagel shop this morning.  What else?   A mobile phone.   I was sitting on a rental car shuttle bus the other day and looked around and noticed I was sharing the bus with about a dozen or so other business travelers, and it hit me that every single one Read more »

Technology breakthroughs in our industry are naturally going to lend themselves to vertical integration.  And these changes in the status quo – in this case the web’s impact on traditional focus group spending – are always rocky transitions.  The cost of things change.  The people delivering the services find themselves faced with new options to do their work. However I am a big believer that value wins. Value isn’t just about price, and it’s not just about access. Sure those help – but they only Read more »

Messaging matters, as this sign from an entrepreneur clearly shows.  But do your clients clearly understand what you’re saying?  What we think we say isn’t always what the consumer hears; what we write isn’t always what a consumer reads.  When a meat market advertises a special on “ground hog meat,” will a consumer think that it’s advertising “groundhog meat”?   Often times what you need to do is connect visually and verbally with your customers – ask them to take a look at your own Read more »

Truly breakthrough products are the magical combination of style and function.  If those two attributes come together in just the right mix, what results is more than just a great product – it’s in essence a fantasy experience for the customer and a smashing success for the company that provides it.   But even the best and brightest product developers fail if they ignore the fact that it’s the consumer – not a company — who defines whether a product has those qualities.   Understanding Read more »