Product Year in Review 2022

Welcome to Recollective's 2022 Product Year in Review. We're delighted to reflect on this past year and the progress we've made in providing researchers with the best qualitative research solution. We prioritized capturing your feedback and we're incredibly grateful for the numerous opportunities to learn and grow from your experiences.

Our Product and Development teams have seen tremendous growth in 2022, and we're excited to share some of the highlights. We've improved existing features that our users love, as well as released new ones that have quickly become favourites.

Teamwork makes the dream work

We take investing in our product seriously, so we've expanded our Development team. This year, we were thrilled to bring on board:

• Mark Thompson, VP of Engineering
• Mike Gilmour, Director of Software Quality Assurance
• Ziad Shuwaikh, Senior DevSecOps, and
• Srinidhi Narayanan, Quality Assurance Specialist

We also expanded our Product team with the addition of Solmas Baibordi as an Interaction Designer and Samantha MacDonald who moved from our Implementation Services team to join us as Associate Product Manager.

Do you want to join us in 2023? We are actively hiring Front-End Developers and Senior Java Developers!

Best-in-class usability & reliability

Recollective's success is rooted in its ability to provide powerful capabilities with ease-of-use. That's why we are equally focused on improving the user experience as we are on developing new features. In 2022, we made many impactful improvements to help you manage your setup more efficiently, so you can spend more time exploring your insights.

• Automatic visibility setting for new segments: Segments created within a study are now only visible to that study. You can still edit segment visibility at any time in the Site Administration area.
• Inline Add Segment: Expedite programming logic within Activities and Tasks with in-line Segment creation for Prompt and Poll Tasks (and benefit from automatically limited visibility!)
• Improved Studies card: The customizable home page of a Recollective site includes a “Studies” card listing all available studies. Admins can now hand pick which Studies appear on a Studies card for truly customizable Home page.
• Chart Precision: Chart customization now includes ability to set the desired decimal precision for all charts. This applies to absolute values and percentages. Admin can select a “No Decimals” (e.g. whole numbers only) OR they can restrict it to 1 or 2 decimals of precision.

Streamlined moderation & analysis

Managing participants and their insights is essential to running successful online qual at scale. We released two major new features to make it easier for researchers to manage large samples and ensure high quality insights can be discovered and communicated with minimal effort:

Video Playlists

Create compelling highlight reels from video responses and live meetings with Video Playlists. Researchers can quickly review and select the most insightful moments from their video data, add dynamic text overlays, and export it all as a single video file with smooth transitions - all without the need for additional video editing software.

Message Templates

Creating a personalized community experience is essential for participant engagement. To make communication quick and consistent in a busy study, Message Templates can be used. These templates can be found in various locations across the site and allow your team to:

• Invite participants and Admins
• Ask probing questions on task responses
• Send scheduled email broadcasts or private messages
• Start new discussion topics or reply to existing ones

Participant Experience

We recognize that your participants are people, and their experience with your online research community is important. If they are confused or frustrated with the technology, their responses may not be of the same quality.

Here are some of the improvements we made to the participant experience in Recollective to keep them engaged and enjoying their time:

• Focus Mode: Task completion forms have been simplified and updated for improved clarity. To reduce distractions, the study header and navigation bar are hidden while responding to tasks. The help option (“?” button) is still visible and includes a new “Ask” option, which opens the in-study message form.
• In-page webcam capture: The Multimedia Task now loads the webcam recorder directly on the page, instead of in a pop-up window. If "Video" is the only response type enabled, the webcam recorder will appear instantly. This improvement ensures the task instructions remain visible, allowing participants to easily refer to the questions while filming their response.
• Ability to open instructions in a separate window: Participants can now keep Task instructions in view while responding to any Task type. This is especially helpful for longer form Tasks, as it allows participants to keep a concept visible, or refer to instructions while making a screen recording.

Managing and profiling panelists

Recollective already allows for the creation of a long-term, reliable panel that can be managed, updated, and engaged with. This year, we enhanced our panelist profiling capabilities, setting the stage for significant panel management advancements to come in 2023 🤫.

Here are some of the key profiling capabilities we added this year:

• Profile Field segmentation and screener branching: Limit the visibility of a profile field to select segments of panelists to achieve simple branching when screening participants.
• Profile Fields Card: Profile fields can now be completed at any time, not just during site-level and study-level screening. Administrators can prompt panelists to complete fields on any home page with a new Profile Fields card. They can also select which fields appear and in what order. Participants will only see the fields they are allowed to view due to segmentation.
• Prompt profile field: Guide participants to visit external surveys or any other page using the new "Prompt" field type. This field can be found on the Profile Fields Card. When a panelist follows the prompt, you can optionally redirect them to a "Success URL" to track completion.
• Inline Agreements: Legal and consent agreements are essential for successful research studies. Recollective's "Agreements" feature has been improved to enable click-through agreements without the need for pop-up windows.
• Improved Webhooks: Integration with Recollective sometimes depends on external systems being made aware of key actions that occur within the site. These external triggers are called Webhooks, and we've added a new event type: "Activity: Available". Additionally, a Webhook payload can be sent as JSON, allowing any supported action to be posted into tools such as Slack.

Improved live activities

Recollective also includes powerful tools for synchronous Live Video Interviews and Live Group Video Chat meetings. These synchronous tools were also improved in 2022:

• ‍System Check: Participants are guided through a step-by-step verification of their system before attending a live meeting. They are assessed on their camera, mic, speaker, browser settings, firewall access, and network performance. Results from each test are stored and shared with administrators. If a System Check has not been completed recently on the current device, a meeting test reminder will automatically appear.‍
• Meeting Start Control: Hosts can now start their 1:1 interviews in advance to enable collaboration with backroom attendees and simultaneous translators.‍
• Improved Meeting Experience: Various improvements were made to screen sharing and audio controls, including interactive guidance when a user's network appears to be suboptimal.

Security

Protecting customer sites and account holders is paramount. Recollective is continuously investing in security capabilities. We receive security recommendations from a third-party firm that we pay to attack our platform! Every quarter, we dedicate time to implementing their recommendations. Highlights include:

• Automatic login: It is essential for users to return to the site with ease via emailed notifications. To streamline access, Recollective now requires users to verify their email address if they are following an emailed notification link on a new device.
• Protecting sensitive changes: Similarly, when users make sensitive account changes (e.g. email, username, and password changes), Recollective now requires a secondary verification step. They are emailed a code they must provide, or they must enter a two-factor authentication code.

Follow Recollective updates!

We have an iterative development process, so we regularly release product updates. In 2022, we launched a new Product Updates website to keep customers informed of our new features and improvements. Visit updates.recollective.com for a full history of recent releases. Select “Follow” and enter your email to get updates delivered directly to your inbox!

Your feedback is our future

We have expanded our Product team, and we plan to have more meaningful interactions with you in 2023. We appreciate your feedback and are eager to learn how Recollective can better serve you.

If you have great product ideas, we'd love to hear them! Our Product team has made it easy for you to share your ideas through a new feedback form. Visit recollective.com/ideas at any time to make your voice heard.

Conclusion

In the last year, we strived to make the Recollective user experience smooth and easy to use, and to bring in powerful new features like Message Templates and Video Playlists. We also introduced new ways to connect with you and we look forward to continuing this momentum in 2023.