Announcing dscout Live

We first built dscout Diary to capture context-rich moments in everyday life without being there, in the flow of real people's regular routines.

And now, almost three million moments later, we’re thrilled to announce dscout Live, the perfect complement to Diary. Interview real people in context, remotely, with a video tool built expressly for researchers.

Given unlimited resources, most researchers we know would be in the field continuously, observing and talking to people where they live, play and work. But the friction of budgets, resources, and scheduling, plus the effort required to wrangle hours of video and notes, mean too little time spent with people.

We developed Live to help researchers talk face-to-face with more people and to easily share high-impact customer videos with their organizations. See it in action by watching our webcast, or read on to learn about a few of Live's capabilities:

Find and schedule your participants, fast.

Find and screen interviewees with dscout Recruit. Or add scouts directly from a dscout Diary study. And you can easily invite your own participants as well. Either way, you have complete control over who you talk to.

Schedule your interviews directly via Live. No endless email chains to find the right time. Share available slots and let scouts pick what suits them. Invitations and reminders are sent automatically. You'll maintain anonymity throughout.

Talk face-to-face through a beautifully simple UI

Focus on the interview, not the interface. Start the session in your web browser with one click. No complex downloads required.

The whole call is recorded and auto-transcribed, so you can focus on the conversation. Flag interesting moments in-call with a click of a button, or add clips later. No need to break eye contact to take notes in another tool - create time-stamped notes on-the-go within the call interface.

Talk as long as you like. There's no limit on call length and everything is saved as you go.

Screen-sharing and stim are built in to Live. Share prototypes, websites, videos, images, PDFs...almost anything you can share via the web. We capture their screen and their camera, so you see both their reactions and what they're reacting to.

Find and share high-impact moments

Review and analyze the whole interview in video and transcript. Our viewer is interactive: select a section of the time-coded transcript and you'll jump to the same moment in the video. Highlight your favorite moments and export clips. Create notes, collaborate with team members and export your data.

In the moment AND in conversation

Live interviews complement Diary's moments, letting you combine methodologies within a single dscout project. Follow up with favorite scouts from a Diary study. Or run pre- and post-interviews around your Diary study. How you build your project is up to you, but we make sure to keep all of your scouts and data safe and together in one dscout project.

A year in the making

We've been working hard to get Live researcher-ready for over a year. We've talked to hundreds of researchers about how they currently conduct—and would like to conduct—interviews.

We've built new technology, fully integrated with our dscout platform, creating a seamless experience for scouts and researchers.

To provide the most reliable and scalable infrastructure, we've partnered with Twilio, the leading cloud communications platform for video, voice, SMS and security solutions. Live uses WebRTC technology so the whole experience happens in the web browser. No downloads are required for most calls (screen sharing requires a one-click installation of a browser extension for scouts).

We've tuned this new technology through a six-month beta, testing it in as many scenarios and environments, local and global, as we can. Based on feedback, we've added new features and made countless enhancements to meet our users’ needs.

Our beta users have already been using Live to fulfill their real research needs, conducting over 500 interviews to date. Here’s what they’ve got to say:

“I never want to use any other video interview tool, ever again.”

"This is a video research tool first—not just a video conference tool. It's got research functionality built in to save me work on the back end.”

“This is going to save me $7K and two weeks of travel every time we need user interviews.”

? Special thanks to our beta users for the constant flow of feedback. ?

Scouts also love Live. The face-to-face interaction with researchers and the ease of being in their own home makes them feel comfortable and engaged. Happy scouts = eye-opening insight.

Live on June 25th

As of June 25, 2018, Live is available to dscout customers. See for yourself how dscout Live helps you bring more customer voices, with more real-world context, into your organization.

Check out our webcast to see Live in action, or contact us for a demo and to learn more about getting access.

FAQs

Q. How long can a Live session last?
There is no limit to the duration of a Live session. Researchers can talk to scouts as long as both parties would like!

Q. Are downloads required for researchers or participants?
For live video interviewing, no downloads are required! If scouts are required to share their screen as part of the interview, they seamlessly install a Chrome plug-in.

Q. Can you export video and notes from the conversation?
Video (with audio) and notes can be exported – along with transcripts and clips!

Q. Is transcription automatic?
Yes! Interviews are automatically transcribed during the session, and available to you after your session concludes.

Q. What are the platform requirements for using Live?
Live is built for the Google Chrome browser on computers for both scouts and researchers. A mobile experience for scouts in the works. Scout screenshares require a one-click install of a Chrome extension.

Q. Is there technical support for participants?
Participants are supported with several resources to help ensure a high-quality interview. Clear instructions provided with onboarding, and scouts can test their setup inside Live prior to joining a call to ensure their hardware and connection is working properly. We urge participants to test their setup well before a call, so we can offer direct support if needed.