Research has found that more and more customers—and members of the younger generations in particular—wish that companies would communicate with them via text message more often. Use an agile approach with text-based reminders to increase speed and engagement in your research. You’ll also want to be sure to use text messaging in conjunction with email to get better engagement.

Using embedded SMS capabilities, Digsite is able to invite participants to research studies, notify them of new activities and to ask them follow-up questions.

Agile research is typically most successful when you talking to fewer targeted participants vs. a large general audience. Why? If you aren’t talking to people who have the specific problem you are solving, their responses won’t help you build or optimize your solution. However, it’s just as easy to over-define your target audience as it is to under-define your audience.

For example, attitudinal targeting is often misleading as people tend to act differently on various occasions. So, focus on a few of the most important targeting criteria – you can always adjust your audience for your next test based on what you learn.  

It’s easy to get derailed by other learning throughout your research – but don’t try to do too much in your research window. Think about what you need to know vs. what you have time to learn and what you can act on.

Decide on the few things that are most important, and then ask the team what they “think” the research participants will say or do. This will help you identify areas you might need to drill deeper on, and you’ll get the rich insights you need to move forward.  

The intent of agile is to learn as you build solutions with your consumers. But if you're always solely focused on what to test and not how it all works together, it can slow the project down. You don’t always need to show participants something “perfect” to get their feedback. If you don’t have pictures or stimulus - have consumers build solutions that help you see and understand what is important to them.    

One key to effectiveness in agile research is to stay focused on your learning objectives throughout your research. Discuss your team's biggest decision “blockers” and use those to get alignment on project objectives upfront. 

Share your key objectives with your entire team and call out areas you are not prioritizing to avoid a misalignment on projects. Keep the team disciplined to make sure every research activity and question ties back to your project objectives.