7 habits of highly successful surveys

Just read a great whitepaper by Vovici called “7 Habits of Highly Successful Surveys.” It’s a good read, offering a nice overview of the things that you should and shouldn’t do when conducting online surveys.
In summary, the 7 habits are:

Focus on a GoalSurvey the Right Number of People
Craft Your Invitation Carefully
Order Questions [...]

5 business insights for companies wanting to truly understand their market

1. Perception is reality. If your customers think your competitor has a better product  or service than you, they do. It doesn’t matter if your product is technologically superior, is made of more durable materials, etc.
2. Don’t work within a vacuum. Always be scanning trends in technology and consumer behavior, both within your industry and [...]

Is “design research” a subset of “market research”?

There’s a heated debate happening over at Core 77 in response to my recent article “Spend it Wisely: A Market Research Primer for Designers.” Not surprisingly, the design community doesn’t agree with my claim that “design research” is really a subset of “market research.” I’ve just posted the following comment to share a bit more [...]

Spend it wisely: A market research primer for designers

I’m excited to announce a new article that I wrote for Core 77 called “Spend It Wisely: A Market Research Primer for Designers.” Here’s a bit of teaser text.
Market research is expensive—not only for the time and money required to execute it, but also for the opportunity cost it represents to the organization sponsoring it. [...]

The Helsinki School of Economics explores ways to use Design Ethnography in Finnish Bottom of the Pyramid research

I met with a research team at the Helsinki School of Economics this past Friday to share fundamentals of Design Ethnography, as the team is exploring how they might use parts of this method in their upcoming Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) research.
I kicked off the half-day workshop by giving an overview of what Design [...]

Headed to Finland

Today I make my journey to Finland. I’ll be there for nearly two weeks participating in a workshop related to the iBoP Asia grant that I’ve been working on with Emerging Futures Lab.
The end goal of the project grant is to develop a new payment strategy/ transaction model for assisting a low-income, Bottom of the [...]

Three common market research mistakes

1. The decisions that need to be informed by the outcomes of the research haven’t been clearly articulated at the start of the project.
2. The research has been scoped incorrectly. In some instances the project scope has been too limited, not allowing the researcher enough visibility into potential barriers to the acceptance of the product [...]