Behavioral testing outside the home is not as straightforward as it used to be – there are now federal and state guidelines, as well as the comfort and safety of your participants to consider.

If you want to do ethnographic research outside of the home, think of ways for participants to journal or record their experience without putting themselves or others at risk. For example, allow them to journal after they get home, as opposed to having participants record extended live interactions while shopping, at work, or in other locations outside the home.

If you’re looking to test a product or get feedback on packaging, consider shipping the product or stimuli to their home instead of asking participants to go to the store or a facility to pick it up. You can even ship them a competitive product to get their reaction to it.

Use unmoderated video to have participants record the unboxing experience or to upload videos of them interacting with the packaging or product.

It’s important to understand that people’s home lives are much different now than they were several months ago. Consider setting up an online community to give participants flexibility to respond whenever they have a break in their day. Think about unmoderated videos vs. live interviews to allow participants to record when it’s convenient for them. 

Understand that people can get distracted by a variety of things in their home, so don’t require the research be completed all at once. And, if you’re including a live video interview, use shorter 20 to 30-minute interviews when possible.

Agile research works best when you can capture emotions, context, and attitudes. But that doesn’t need to happen face to face. Short unmoderated videos are particularly useful to share emotional reactions show specific situations or issues. You can also have consumers capture shopping or usage experiences.  Agile research platforms offer automated video transcription and text to clip reel analysis tools, making it faster and easier than ever to analyze video results and share findings.

Capturing and understanding consumer experiences are a critical part of agile insights. Whether you’re looking to develop new solutions or improve current products or services, your success depends on understanding and empathizing with customers’ experiences.

Rather than just asking participants to describe an experience, have participants actually show you their interaction with a product/service through video. Combine live video interviews with online tasks or conversations to get deep insights. You can also record the journey of experiences over days or weeks—for longer purchase cycles or extended product usage. Drill deeper into emotions, context, and concerns with agile research.

Once you capture experiences firsthand, you can show early solutions to see how they address the customer’s challenge.  By evaluating solutions against in-context information about your customers’ attitudes and behaviors—you can understand the nuances that make the difference between mediocre and world-class solutions.