April 7, 2011

In a recent MrWeb article, Lightspeed Research President and Global CEO David Day said that we’re competing for people’s online time and offered “surveytainment” as an approach to consider when recruiting and retaining survey respondents. That got me thinking about what I’d consider to be relevant entertainment in that context. As an inveterate gamer, my thoughts naturally gravitated in the direction of game play and how that might be applied to research.

I’m not alone, though. While doing some research on the topic, I found the following on :

• 65% of U.S. households play computer or video games
• The average age of a U.S. game player is 35 years old
• 40% of U.S. game players are women

(In the process I also learned that “surveytainment” is apparently a trademarked term — someone deserves an award for thoroughness on that mouthful!)
Numbers like these make you realize that gaming has become a pervasive cultural phenomenon. Not only has the gaming industry skyrocketed to a global worth of over $100 billion with a proportionate impact on popular culture, but as we age we become comfortable with and propagate the medium’s tropes. So whether you’re addicted to Angry Birds on your iPhone, keep dropping in to Farmville on Facebook, enjoy Guitar Hero on your Wii with friends at a weekend party, or are immersed in online multiplayer games such as World of Warcraft — it’s clear that gaming is something that many of us participate in, increasingly in a social context. And so it’s definitely worth investigating as a way of providing “surveytainment.”

Gaming applied to research isn’t new. In various incarnations, it’s been around for quite some time. But the possibilities inherent today in juxtaposing the Web, social media, smartphones, geo-location… well, you get my drift. Not only are the combinations seemingly endless (and proliferating daily), but it seems likely that with so many permutations, at least some will be of interest to almost everyone.

Gaming concepts can be applied to market research in a variety of ways. At perhaps the simplest level, the standard online survey can be “gamified” by enhancing the graphics and ergonomics so as to make some traditional (read: boring) question types much more engaging and fun. There’s a fair amount of research that shows that, when well-executed, respondent responsiveness and data quality are improved as a result.

Further along the gaming spectrum, elements such as competition and progression-based engagement can be incorporated. For instance, rather than asking respondents to generate or evaluate new ideas independent of one another, the exercise can be re-structured as a contest where those with the most popular idea(s) are rewarded. Our competitive urges can be harnessed to make the process not only more fun, but more productive. And to encourage ongoing participation, respondents can be rewarded with highly-visible labels — whether in the form of badges or titles, these rewards reflect one’s positioning in a hierarchy (game or community) and speak to the effort and experience accrued.

At the far end, gaming platforms and gaming theory can be applied to simulate complex environments where respondents can interact with the environment and each other. For example, shopping situations can be simulated in great detail, down to very realistic stimuli experienced as your avatar strolls up and down the aisles, with data being captured for every movement or pause. Similar in complexity but evolving in a different direction are the sophisticated game-scenario models used to aggregate opinions and assessments on real-life brands, often keeping score via a stock-market-like system (e.g., hsx.com allows you to see how you stack up versus others when building a Hollywood portfolio of movies and stars).

It goes without saying that many of the interesting applications of gaming elements to market research rely on interaction. For games to be interesting and engaging, they need to provide feedback, recognition, and reward commensurate with the player’s (respondent’s?) effort and participation. It’s no coincidence that interest in gaming paradigms for market research is growing in lockstep with the explosion of technologies related to real-time interaction, social media, and communities.

I don’t think we should oversimplify the challenge involved in applying gaming concepts to market research. Clearly, it involves a great deal of creativity in a medium that most researchers aren’t expert in. And, by definition, game play needs to constantly re-invent itself to keep being engaging and fun – so incorporating gaming elements into research isn’t a one-shot issue to resolve. It’s about embracing a new philosophy.

There’s typically some resistance to embracing new research paradigms – often with good reason. There’s been a great deal of science and analysis invested in validating existing paradigms. Change for change’s sake isn’t what we should be after — as noted by Bernie Malinoff in his Sexy Questions, Dangerous Answers study, injecting technoglitz doesn’t necessarily make for better research. But if online research is competing with countless entertainment possibilities, we need to seriously consider applying gaming concepts if we hope to at least hold on to the attention slice that we currently have.

Category:Future of Online Research, Panel Retention
Posted on April 7, 2011



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