1. Market Research in Mobile
World: The Next Frontier
Or naturalism: the struggle for reality
A talk by Siamack Salari
EDLAPPCOM

2. Once upon a time
• Henley Centre for Forecasting, JWT and
DDB London 1992 - 2000
• EverydayLives established in 2000
– Pure ethnographic research consultancy
– True international scope – no partners
– Only work for large international companies

3. In a nutshell
• To sum up what we do
– Obsessive naturalism
– The difference between what is said and done
– Things we didn’t even know we didn’t know
– Things people don’t do or nearly do
– Making the ordinary, extra ordinary
– Adding meaning to events – leading to actions

4. Process

5. Which produced…

6. Commute

7. Our headache

8. Limiting us
• A methodology which is
– labour intensive
– therefore costly
– and time consuming
– Yet very rich and insightful
• Combine above with little business
acumen

9. Needed to re-think how we
worked

10. Revisit our process
• Must capture list
– Themes
• Filming
– 2-3 days in the field
• QGW
– 1 full day
• Co-discoveries
– For each and every respondent

11. Revisit our process
• Analysis and editing
– 3 days for every full day of participant
observation
• Final workshop
– 2 days including a debrief and implication
finding/actioning workshop
• Final report, viral films, special requests,
etc.

12. Brief
• Started writing a wish list of features for an
App in Spring 2009
– Ability to create a list of must captures or themes
– Maps (Geo-tag) was also important
– Ability to toggle between capturing video, audio
and still images
• Needed to be able to return to email inbox
and have entries waiting

13. Enter the App monster
• Started working on App in summer 2009
• Started blogging all about it… forget
confidentiality, IP and patents

14. But first

15. The poolside chat
• I explained the App to a fellow dad
watching his kids learning to swim
• He inspired me to think about…
– Empowering consumers – to share private
information on their own terms
– Level the playing field
– Power to the people!
• Many more ‘people’ to sell App to than
researchers – except we didn’t

16. Live in App store in December
2009
• There were problems with it – bugs and
crashes = unhappy ethnographers
• No save to camera roll
• Restrictive labels
• Needed updates
• Supplier couldn’t deliver
• Found new supplier

17. In the meantime

18. Culture change
• Resistance from our own people
• Seen as a ‘filter’
• Seen as contradictory to our offer of
naturalistic observation
– Naturalism tradeoff
– Inability to ‘fish’
– Co-discoveries
• Giving up DV cameras will not be easy

19. Fishing example

20. Fishing example

21. Illustration

22. Live in App store in December
2009

23. Turn it on its head
• Consumer version built with new team
• Back to front (which was the right way
round)
• And Pro version re-designed around
consumer version
• Free consumer version – the enormous
market mentioned earlier

24. Meanwhile
• Coca-Cola get in touch asking for BB
version
• MasterCard, Google, RIM, Xerox, P&G &
Unilever get in touch too
• Coca-Cola funded Blackberry version

25. Coca-Cola story in brief

26. Big client, big problems
• Attacked second only to Pentagon
• Privacy issue and receipts
• Destruction testing
• Security
• API rather than email
• Almost resolved

27. Managing the data

28. The tail that wagged the dog
• Only considered a web Application for
storing entries after first Consumer App
was completed
• Needed a smart inbox
• App needed to ‘talk’ to web application –
email not good enough

29. Screen grabs from web site

30. Main page

31. Entry

32. Work areas

33. Upload from desktop

34. Key

35. Essentials
• Consumer App a free download with
option of registering for a research on first
opening the App
• Ability to create work areas on web
application
• Ability to ‘push’ projects from web
application to hundreds/thousands of
users

36. Beta projects

37. More than one approach
• App based ethno studies
• Diaries using the App to select best of the
rest to conduct (conventional) deep dives
with
• Longitudinal diaries >12 months

38. Into the future
• New company established separate to
EverydayLives
• Privacy receipts
• New functionality queued up to be added
– Bar code, analysis and reporting
• Android version
• iPad and Android tablet

39. Lessons learnt
• Practice what you preach – we are only now
beginning to
• Talk about it – don’t keep it confidential
• Don’t test it yourself – you will be much too
forgiving
• Work with clients, don’t just sell to them
• Expect your costs to (minimum) double
during development – not due to bad
management
• Once done, never stand still

40. Summary description

41. 1 How it • API mean entries
works sent/received in
background
Register on web application
(www.beta2.ethosapp.com)
Use username and
password on device App to
automatically synch
All projects synched and
visible on device and on-
line

42. 2 How it • Complete project tagged
works and waiting for you on
Capture events then your desktop
tag, ‘send’ and
forget
Video, audio, still
images and text
Push projects to
respondents or
colleagues
Collaboratively
analyse entries
Create private work
areas

43. • Digital suggestions box
3 Future
Barcode readers for
the app and project
reporting
functionality will be
added in next few
weeks and month

44. Presented @ International conference on Market
Research in the Mobile World
2 & 3 Dec 2010, Berlin
For more information
Please visit: http://www.merlien.org