Diary Study

[pbest]

Diary Study (dscout)

What

Diary Studies (via dscout) allow us to collect qualitative insights in the form of user-generated video recordings which capture users' meaningful moments and everyday experiences in the context of their own environments.

Why

Assess realtime user needs and behaviors. Gain contextual insights. Better understand the natural customer journey.

How to do it

dscout offers a great summary of the process here.

Overview
1. Plan Your Research:
Start by mapping out your research objectives, KPIs, and hypotheses. Develop a screener survey or list of target user demographics or traits that your scouts should possess.

2. Build Your Mission:
Every dscout project* contains a single, overarching "Mission." Each Mission is comprised of a series of tasks or "Parts," each of which typically calls for one media response (photo, video, screen recording) along with 10-15 follow-up questions. Parts are typically centered around one of five topics (Moments, Process, Inventory, Reflection, Ideation), and are 100% customizable. While you can include up to 10 Parts, most Missions usually only contain 2-5.

• Note: Every dscout Mission requires a new SOW to be signed. Reach out to our contact, Jeff Zamiara ([email protected]) to facilitate.

3. Screen or Recruit Scouts:
You have the option of recruiting users, or "scouts," through dscout using a screener (flat recruitment fee of $500), or inviting your own group of users to complete your Mission. Aim for 15-25 scouts to complete each Mission.

When inviting your own users, you can either share the Mission via email or allow them to sign up on their own via a Mission Landing Page (the latter is free, but you must turn on the landing page setting). The benefit to the latter is that your client can protect their scouts' privacy.

4. Manage Your Mission:
After you launch your Mission to scouts, you will start to see their entries populate in your dashboard. The tool allows you to make notes, create and download video clips, and analyze trends.

Upon Mission completion, it is a best practice to compensate your scouts ($40-60 each).

5. Analyze the Results:
Now it's time to uncover insights, examine relationships, and quantify themes. You can view individual entries, or assess entry data in aggregate. Filters and custom tags make it easy to document and identify trends in your data.

**6. [Export Data] 30 days after your Mission launches, you have 60 days to export your research data before it's automatically deleted. Once it's download it, add it to your project folder. Don't forget to do this!

Pricing

Pricing varies greatly based on the level of support you want from dscout, number of admin user seats, how many scouts you use, and whether you use dscout recruitment, which is a fixed fee of $500.

Each of these pricing options assumes you would have one admin, up to one month of research and up to 25 participants on the project. (NOTE: We only paid ended up paying $1,750 + incentive costs for our dscout Mission w/ Capital One, so these numbers are a little high)

Option 1 "Guidance" Project
At this level, you would design your Mission and Parts and then submit for review via the platform. After you had submitted your plans and build, a Research Advisor would provide advice and suggestions via 2 rounds of feedback again through the platform.

• Cost w/ 25 participants: $2,875 + incentive costs

Option 2 "Design" Project
At this level, you would be introduced to a Research Advisor who would have a kickoff call with you and would work with you to actually plan out and help build your research into the platform together. They would assist you up until the point where your participants had been invited in and you were launching the project.

• Cost w/ 25 participants: $4,000 + incentive costs

Option 3 "Management" Project
At this level, in addition to a Research Advisor helping you to plan and program your research within the platform, that Research Advisor will also help you with scout management and communication with participants. This option, like the Design option, would also provide proactive feedback and collaboration on your design, with some additional time dedicated to helping with the actual management of the project while it is live.

• Cost w/ 25 participants: $5,125+ incentive costs

Format of Output

A collection of entries, and a report that summarizes your research, insights, and action items.

Examples

• Capital One Eno (December 2018)

Time Required

• Prep: 4-6 business days
• Mission Completion: 3-14 days
• Analysis: 4-6 business days

Further Reading

The dscout support site is immensely helpful. Here you can find extensive step-by-step tutorials for how to set up your project's Mission and Parts. https://help.dscout.com/category/105-getting-started

[pbest]

• Add topline method description (for previews)
• Make "what" and "why" less specific to dscout (how-to can still be dscout specific)
• Are there any dscout alternatives we can just purely link to as a fall back
• Spend some time adding pro-tips. Its easy to fall into more validation/user testing type questions. What's different about recruiting?
• Can you add some detail and weight to the "Why"? This is a newer method and PMs/Biz Dev might need more support in talking about it
• Which pricing model is right for most projects? What do we recommend?