5 Easy Ways to Craft More Impactful Deliverables with dscout

Rich, complex, qual studies yield rich, complex, qual data. 

And rich, complex, qual data can move mountains (and stakeholders) when presented well.

Here are some tactics for distilling your most robust data sets into their most impactful deliverables. 

Surface "you-had-to-be-there" moments

Mobile research offers many benefits. Namely, participant authenticity, scale, and speed.

Conversation-starting deliverables use data that reveals what stakeholders couldn't possible know or see otherwise. Use a simple "Show me..." prompt with dscout's Diary platform and your data—and eventual deliverable—is on the way toward impact.

Freed from the lab or your research schedule, participants on dscout's platforms can take you and your stakeholders anywhere, from airport cabins and grocery aisles to their family rooms. 

Start with "Show me..." and finish with your research question:

• "...moments when a service or brand exceeds expectations"
• "...an app you can't live without"
• "...how you research a vacation or holiday"
• "...what you're doing after visiting your physician"

dscout's Diary tool leverages a moment-based method, capturing data that is close to the experience of interest. Good deliverables start with better data.

Scan for the eye-opening data

Staring at dozens—or even hundreds—of unmoderated moments without a sense of where to start? No problem. dscout data is easy to sift through. 

Whether it's a brand, emotion, part of the experience, or a feature, dscout's researcher dashboard can search open-end and video transcriptions in real-time. Just use the search bar and start hunting for the moments that include the right keywords. You'll quickly find the insights that make your case or that best answer your stakeholders' questions.

Alternatively, you can use a closed-ended questions to filter to the most important moments, like the moments rated lowest for satisfaction or those that included the sign-up window of your app. Filters make it easy to start with the most important moments.

Then bookmark, tag, or group the moments for easier recall later. Use the share link feature to immediately send to stakeholders or the Slack integration to drop videos into a shared channel. The best deliverable is the one that's consumed, and sometimes that means piecemeal, bite-sized, atomized insights, and dscout's search and filter capabilities makes it a snap.

Create highlight reels by theme

When participants speak for themselves, and even show stakeholders how, when, and why an experience or brand matters to them, stakeholders' eyes focus and attune. Give them the moments that matter to your users in a format that's easy to digest and difficult to ignore: video.

With dscout's Media View, we've created a lightweight and easy to use video playlist maker and editor.

Start with 3-5 videos—from the same or different scouts—and add them to a playlist. Then, use the built-in editing tools to trim to the exact moments of interest.

Finally, with one click, create an exportable version or share it directly with a public—or private—link. Without the help of a videographer you're injecting empathy into your deliverables, bringing them to life by showing the point of view of your users—bringing them to the decision-making table.

Leverage done-for-you data visualization

Mixing qual with quant balances deliverables, bringing the best of numbers and supporting it with authentic and in-the-moment themes. Data that's visual goes a long way to keeping interest high and creating share-worthy reports.

dscout has two baked-in data visualization features, both are easy to use and will up your deliverable quality with fewer steps.

First is frequency charts, found by clicking the bar chart icon on your research dashboard. This produces summary charts for both demographic characteristics of your sample and for responses to your closed-ended questions.

The charts respond to filters, giving you more power to drill down to the right data combination; they are also sortable to show least to greatest and vice-versa. Finally, with one click they export for dropping into decks and reports.

Second is word clouds for your open-ended and video responses. Sortable by question, these clouds can be customized by type of word or any of the filters available throughout the platform, like demographics or closed-ends.

Create a word cloud of named brands for the question, "What service are you using right now?" or an emotion cloud for the question, "How are you feeling about this step in the process?" Like the frequency charts, word clouds are exportable with one click, keeping you in the dscout platform and saving you time (not to mention adding a new dimension to your deliverable or report).

dscout is a powerful tool for collecting mixed data types, from photo/video to like quant, and combined with data visualizations, your deliverables can be as nuanced and dynamic as the data you collect.

Make the digital, physical

Sometimes, even the best deliverable, when presented digitally, doesn't make the impact it should. These moments may call for physical versions of the outputs, where stakeholders are present in front of the moments that make up the analysis.

Here, dscout makes it easy to export PDF versions of your collected moments, including video stills, photos, transcripts, and open/closed-ends on a single page, which you can arrange in a journey, by theme, or even by appropriate business unit. It's impossible to archive or delete a living, physical, public deliverable, and sometimes getting the data out of dscout is the best way forward.

Simply click the export icon in the upper-right and select "Print/PDF," and then customize the data you'd like included. Bring your users to live in the public spaces of your company for a deliverable that's more tangible that word or video on a screen can provide.