Stop. Collaborate In-tegration: dscout Product Highlights
Explore key updates from 2022 and see what’s on deck for 2023.
At People Nerds 2022, we highlighted countless ways that user research has adapted in the last couple of years. The spaces where we conduct research, the methods we use, and how we collaborate with stakeholders and colleagues are changing in monumental ways.
UX is without a doubt evolving—and dscout continues to adapt to help organizations do high-quality, impactful research to keep users at the forefront.
Below, we’ve shared some notable updates we’ve made to the platform and tease what’s to come in 2023.
Jump to:
The newest (and soon to be released)
New partnership and integration with Miro
Seamlessly pull your dscout videos into Miro
We are thrilled to announce the beginning of an exciting partnership with Miro and introduce dscout’s brand-new Miro integration.
Now, you can upload and share participant videos from your dscout research projects in Miro for better collaboration.
You can find the app by logging into Miro and downloading dscout within the Miro app store (must be a subscriber of both dscout and Miro). Once you’ve downloaded the app, you can connect your dscout account, log in, and have immediate access to a list of shared dscout videos. These can be one-off videos from our products or fully finished highlight reels from our playlist builder.
Seeing and hearing real customers is the best way to secure stakeholder buy-in and see the impact of research across the organization. Connect your Miro and dscout accounts now.
Partnership and research opportunity
dscout and Miro will be working together over the coming year to conduct an in-depth study on stakeholders: who they are, how to engage them, and how to manage them in this new remote/hybrid world.
To kick off this project, we’re looking for senior researchers, managers, and thought leaders to share their wisdom with us and our community about stakeholder engagement.
If you’re interested in sharing your insights, stay tuned as we'll be reaching out to the People Nerds community in the coming weeks.
We’ll be sharing those findings with the People Nerds community, and give a sneak peek to those who want to participate in our upcoming study.
Live closed captioning
As our Marketing Research Lead and Podcast Host, Karen Eisenhauer, discussed at the event, we ran research around the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community in a partnership with Lenovo.
From that research, we discovered opportunities for us to improve our platform’s inclusivity. Starting next week, Live missions will have real-time captioning for all web-based participants and researchers.
With real-time transcription, participants with hearing loss will have better access to moderated conversations with you and your team, and have more of a say in the products and experiences we build together.
Piping
Piping is the ability to use responses from previous questions as a part of the prompt in a new question. In Diary, simply type an @ symbol while you're writing your question and all pipable choices will appear for you to use—the tech will handle the rest.
Piping is one of many innovations you will see over the coming months as we continue to make Diary a more powerful, flexible tool for research. Piping will be available to dscout users this November.
The coolest (key updates launched in 2022)
Web Diary
With this ability, you can direct participants to unique desktop-specific concepts like prototypes or URLs for evaluative testing and feedback. You can also see a complete, multi-channel user journey as the participant moves from mobile, to the physical world, and then into the desktop computer.
Flexible media limits
We recently expanded our platform’s media limits to allow for longer videos and more photos so you can capture more of what you want from participants. In Diary missions, participants can now submit up to five photos along with a video response (max length, five minutes).
To learn more about the expanded media limits on Express and Recruit, read: Expanded Media Limits on dscout.
Improved tagging and analysis
We introduced a more intuitive tagging interface by bringing tagging to the response level. This update gives you even more powerful analysis views.
Learn more about making empathy actionable with new analysis features.
And what's next (on the horizon in 2023)
A redesigned Express
Express, dscout’s quick-turn unmoderated research product, is getting a refresh In 2023. And the new, more intuitive UI is just the beginning.
In the first half of the year, Express will introduce two new ways to better target participants for your projects. First, better-automated recruitment that leverages dscout’s significantly expanded participant profiles, allowing you to pinpoint participants based on common screening criteria.
Second, we will also be launching updated, custom screening questions. These screening questions will give you precise control, allowing you to identify just the right participants for your research goals.
And, if you decide you would rather bring your own participants into dscout Express, our BYO participants feature will be made available in the first half of 2023.
Evaluative methods in dscout
In the second half of 2023, dscout will be launching evaluative methods built on top of the Express workflow. We’re kicking this feature off with usability testing and will later be adding concept testing.
Evaluative methods will include:
- Streamlined workflows: We’ll surface the most important decisions up-front, so you can jump into designing your study fast.
- Method-specific capabilities: Specific methods require specific tools, and we’ve built them into our platform. For example, with usability this includes complete session recordings. For concept testing, it includes randomization.
- Best practices: These methods will not only include recommendations from our experts, but allow your team to add and save your own questions to make your organization's best practices more accessible.
- Robust tools for analysis: We’re introducing a new analysis experience by launching a question library and power-up questions to easily quantify qualitative feedback and generate powerful visualizations.
Session recording, randomization, a full question library…the gang’s all here to help you continue answering the tough questions in new ways.
Tools for informed consent, approval workflows, and beyond
dscout has worked closely with operations teams and department leaders to understand what successful scaling means, and we’re working to address these essential criteria that will help your team scale successfully.
In particular, security and making sure participants and their data are cared for is
is a top concern. Not only can you trust our GDPR and CCPA, ISO27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, and HITRUST certifications, but we have invested in functionality beyond certifications. This includes advanced features to manage PII redaction, as well as data deletion and retention policies increasingly required by many enterprises.
Efficiency and quality
Or, more simply put: getting stuff done while ensuring that the research meets your standards for rigor and integrity.
In the second half of 2023, dscout will introduce tools that give res ops and research leaders the power to manage research efficiently and with the right level of oversight.
To start, you will be able to establish cross-organizational standards, such as requiring informed consent to run all your research on the dscout platform.
You’ll also be able to create approval workflows. Research orgs can design research, request review, and provide feedback—all within the dscout platform.
With these capabilities in hand, your team will be able to ensure quality research practices across all dscout products: creating guardrails, reviewing research design, and providing guidance efficiently.
Parting notes
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us at this year’s event and to all those who use our platform. You continue to bring new ideas and perspectives into UX and inspire us to keep adapting to help you with your user-centric work.
We’re beyond excited to keep expanding our tools, collaborating with you, and pushing our industry forward.
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