New Video Review Task Type

Following the Recollective release in August 2017, you now have a choice of engaging your participants using not just the standard asynchronous Activities over the course of days, weeks, month or years but also in Realtime via text-based focus groups. Both methodologies present their own distinct advantages and when deployed together, achieve a unique synergy.

Now that it's relatively easy to produce, store, distribute and consume, video has become a dominant form of content. No longer is it confined to expensive TV advertisements or grainy home movies. Video reigns in social media advertising, product introductions, user-generated content, customer support, employee engagement and more.

Despite its popularity, it hasn't been easy to systematically collect qualitative feedback on video content. We're aiming to solve this need with a brand new Recollective task type: Video Review.

This new task type is a perfect complement to any Recollective study that has videos to share or test with study participants.

Recollective already has strong video capabilities; it's been possible for some time to attach a video as stimulus to any task type. Video Review now takes the experience to another level by allowing comments to be collected during playback. Each comment collected is both categorized and time-coded. Specialized charts and transcripts are also provided to summarize and export this valuable data.

Task Setup

Similar to the Recollective Image Review task where analysts upload the image to be reviewed, the new Video Review task begins by uploading a video to be reviewed. We recommend a 720p version of the video content for the best overall experience. Videos can be of any duration, from a 30 second commercial to an hour-long training seminar.

Next, analysts configure the categories, called "markers", which will be associated to the comments made during task completion. The default markers are "Like" and "Dislike" with corresponding icons. Analysts can define any number of markers for this task. The marker icons are visually interesting as they can be any one of 2,500+ emoji icons. Note that we plan to bring this same marker flexibility to our existing Image Review task type which will ensure consistency and greater overall utility.

Various other options are available during the task setup such as enforcing limits on comment length and marker usage. As with other task types, analysts can also provide participants with a chance to answer an overall question or submit additional comments at the end of their review.

Remember: study administrators are never limited to a single question or task type. The same video can be a part of many tasks. For example, a simple open-ended task might prompt participants to watch the video in its entirely to get a general impression before a detailed Video Review is requested.

Task Completion

When a participant encounters a Video Review task type, they will first see the instructions provided by the analyst. It's in these instructions that analysts should describe the goal of the review and any important requirements such as any minimums that must be met.

When ready, the participant starts the playback of the video. Since the video must be paused repeatedly, we've included a large play / pause toggle along with shortcuts to jump back and forward by 5 seconds.

The participant is invited to select a marker (e.g. "Like" or "Dislike") and then add their comment. If the video was playing, it will pause once the participant starts typing. The comment added will be associated to the current playback time of the video.

As markers are added, they can be reviewed and updated as needed before the video review is finally submitted by the participant.

Response Analysis

Recollective's unique Summary Stream provides administrators and analysts a news feed-style roll-up of recent activity. This makes it easy for everyone in a study to locate and engage with new responses, including those from the new Video Review task type.

Like all other task types, administrators do not need to leave the stream to give a rating, post a probing question, or mark the response as reviewed. They can also highlight any participant-submitted text to save and codify insightful verbatim excerpts. Shortcuts are also provided to view the task-level summaries such as word clouds and charts.

One really nice feature of the Video Review task is that a single response can be viewed in detail from the stream such that comments are highlighted in sync to the video playback. Furthermore, selecting a comment in this mode instantly forwards the video to that point in time.

Chart Summary

After many Video Review responses have been received, it's time to head over to the Charts summary. This area provides analysts with an overall view of the feedback collected.

The chart page for a Video Review task starts by showing a consolidated timeline of markers as a series of icons. The administrator can focus their analysis on a subset of participants or on a subset of the video. Drag handles directly below the video can be pulled to narrow-in on a desired time frame which updates the charts and data tables below.

Next, a distribution bubble chart plots each marker in its own lane. The bubbles indicate how many of a certain marker were placed at a given point in time. We've even included a synchronized playback position indicator over this chart.

A final chart summarizes marker usage frequency, which appears as either a pie or bar chart. As usual, all charts can be exported into various formats such as PNG or PDF.

This summary page ends with two data tables. The first summarizes marker frequency, while the other lists each individual marker submitted. Both tables can be exported as CSV files.

Transcripts

Like all other task types, the Video Review task's configuration and all its responses can be exported into a single consolidated transcript. The transcript is available in HTML, Excel and CSV formats.

Each response in the transcript includes raw data and related metadata about the participant and their task response.

Your Feedback

We see this as only the first version of the Video Review task type. We have no doubt that our customers will love it but also offer great feedback on how it can be improved for their use cases.

With some ideas of our own already, we hope to introduce improvements over time to make this task an increasingly valuable part of your Recollective studies. Please don't be shy to share your ideas with us as well.

Philippe Dame
Co-Founder & CPO

Let's research happy together