After attending a webinar hosted by Qualtrics, Dr. David Rock of the Neuroleadership Institute explained the importance of insights and how they relate to communicating and collecting data. Here are some key themes I took away from the webinar:
Collecting data is not just important to the client, but to the participant and researchers, as well. When it comes to surveys or any co-creation solution (such as KLC’s own CrowdWeaving®), participants want to know how they can influence decisions that clients make. In turn, clients want to gain knowledge on what their consumers want. And as researchers, we want to bridge the gap to appease both sides and find a resolution that’s advantageous.
Insights can be defined as a “conclusion formed by the unconscious”. When a solution is derived intuitively, the likelihood of the information being stored into the long term memory is higher and therefore, more likely to be remembered longer than a linear solution. For example, take a moment to look at the picture to the left. At first many people may see a vase, but if you take another minute, you may see two persons facing one another. The moment you recognized the other image, your synapses fired and made the realization and that was your “aha” moment, also known as your insight. Now that you see the other image, it is almost impossible not to see it.
As researchers, it’s our job to recreate the “aha moments”, not only when relating data to the client, but also for participants so they are engaged to provide quality feedback. When we understand our clients’ objectives we are able to create an enhanced user experience for the consumers. From the early stages of a project (project scope, survey design, etc.) it’s important to hone down the essential insight that we are looking for and we can take away. Rather than complicating a survey with 100 questions on various topics, it’s better to break down the objectives and do 5 different surveys with 20 questions. When a project is simplified, themes are more salient, and thus insights emerge easily.
The same concept applies to analyzing and presenting the data to a client. Simplifying reports while calling attention to insights yields the client’s “aha” moment when they recognize how the results relate to their objectives.
We’ve all heard that bigger is better, and to an extent that is true. As a project manager, we always want higher response rates, more elaborate open ends, but what really matters is the balance between quantity and quality. We want our results to be valid, but we want them to matter. It’s our responsibility to the participants and client to transform the project and results to create a moment they will remember.
TL; DR: Insights matter.