dscout

““The more I can shorten the time it takes me to recruit people and plan the research, the more time I have to do the rest—analysis, synthesis, good storytelling, and good design.””

““Dscout has been really great at helping us recruit and collect data,” William says. “Some of the reasons why it’s been so helpful is because we are given a certain amount of time to do everything and we need to come up with insights.””

““More than ever before, we’re striving for consumer-led innovation...Tools like Dscout allow us to walk that walk, and actually not only want to do that, but actually do that, by truly understanding the consumers we serve.””

“In user research, video is currency. The mobile ethnography we did with Dscout for this project allowed for a tremendous depth of understanding about our users, more than any other project I've worked on. We built relationships with our participants and got prolonged exposure into their mental models. It's that kind of understanding that truly great products and services are built on.”

“We found Dscout incredibly effective because it’s just so deep and comprehensive. In a stakeholder presentation, we could capture video clips, show a customer journey, and illustrate how old and young people are the same in terms of their media behaviors.”

“The power of the video for our audience was pretty strong. Because Dscout is on the person's device at their own prompt, there may be a bit more candor and intimacy in their responses.”

“We've done diary studies before, but I think the mobile experience of Dscout, and having that constant fixture in people's eyes over the 18 days that we had them, increased their comfort and familiarity, and ultimately, I think their vulnerability and trust in the Dscout platform, with the study, and with us.”

“Dscout really helped us during this period by allowing us to tell stories faster and gave us much more visibility into the runner.”

“We've tried to be pretty experimental in our approach, but one thing I've loved about working with Dscout is collaborating with their team. We can throw something out there and say, "Hey, we want to learn this. Here are some ideas of how we might get there," and their researchers respond with, "Oh, have you thought about taking this approach?" They bring unique ideas to the table that we can build on and run with.”

“Dscout gives us a lot more confidence to share things with stakeholders and it gives you different modes. It's all built-in. So, it's less lead time. You actually have resources at Dscout that help you up your game in terms of your research.”

“Dscout was the perfect solution for us because it allowed us to do both. We could chart the ever changing perceptions that were basically day to day, hour to hour, depending on the moment in time during the pandemic. It allowed us to understand all that.”

“That's really rewarding as a researcher, to realize that you're actually helping to cast a light on something or helping people to think deeper or perhaps think more sensitively about things that maybe they take for granted otherwise.”

“But if I can do something that's ongoing like journaling, it causes people to think about their own actions and contexts more closely and provide responses that are more substantive. I had a project where participants came up to us after saying, ‘You know, I usually don't think about this aspect of my life. I don't feel like I usually have the time to reflect, and so I really appreciate it. Thank you for helping me reflect on this.’”

“When co-creation is coupled with a diary or journaling, it leads to introspection that sometimes you don't get through other methods,” she explains. “For example, if I were to do a co-creation in a focus group session, and I bring people in and we talk about a topic for an hour and then jump into a creative exercise, they're really just designing based on what we've been discussing during that brief period of time.”

“Being able to do remote qual, mobile ethnographies, journaling, and even robust screeners allows you to learn really fast and make sure that the time you spend with people in-person is as rich and meaningful as it can be,” Sara says.”

“When we came back during repeat visits, we were able to use those entries as prompts for digging deeper into the conversation.”

“In between our visits, we had them do Dscout self-journaling as a way for them to actually think about the problems we talked about and reflect on them. They had time and space to think more deeply than they could if we were just asking them in the moment.”

“We see Dscout being complementary to traditional research methods,” says Sara. “For example, a team that I was on earlier this year did some ethnographic work. We went in-context to understand people, how they lived, and the role that various products had played in their life.”

“We are using Dscout to really explore, build, and test different ways to get insights from people,” explains Sara. “We love the idea that we can be talking to 10 people who are spread out across the country, who may be living very different lives and have very different schedules. And we can still engage with them on a schedule that works for us and doesn’t require us to travel to 10 different cities to try to spend time with people.”

“As a complementary method, Dscout actually let us get a whole lot more out of our ethnographic work because now we had this extra way of gathering insights or gathering their own self-reflections that maybe we wouldn't have gotten to using some more traditional methods.”

“It also allows us to spend more time with people than perhaps we could if we were doing purely a traditional research, even if it's in-home, in-context ethnography. Being able to spend multiple days with someone and have moments that span across time is really useful.”

“Being able to do remote qual, mobile ethnographies, journaling, and robust screeners allows you to learn quickly and make sure that the time you spend with people in-person is as rich and meaningful as possible.”

“I actually do not see a future for my team where Dscout is not playing a critical role in what we’re doing.”

““The quantitative reporting and the fantastic videos on the qualitative side — it gave us such specific and emotional material that quickly explained the situation and explained the research.””

““That totally speaks to that organic quality of kids interacting in a way that is not ‘put on’ like that in a research facility. It was a great benefit to the campaign to see the keyboard play out in real time through the lens of our audience.”