Self Captures Guide for Researchers

Updated 20 September 2024 18:18

Melissa

Explore how to make the most of Discuss for your Asynchronous Research needs. This guide is here to assist Project Owners, Editors, and Collaborators in setting up and managing Self-Captures.

Manage your Asynchronous Research effortlessly within your project portal, where you can create, launch, and collect responses all in one convenient platform.

Why Use Self Captures for Asynchronous Research?

Gather rich, unmoderated customer-driven feedback. Self Captures enables you to give respondents tasks to complete, or prompt them with video open-ended questions to answer on their own time — simply share your Self Captures link into any email, social media post, customer feedback survey, and more!

Design research projects with any methodology for prototype and package feedback, usability testing, message and brand research, competitor assessment, and more!

Some use cases may include:

Video Open-End Surveys
Open Ended Questions in a Survey
Video Diaries
Pre-work
Post-work

What Features Are Included?

Unmoderated Surveys	Easy-to-use survey builder lets you launch unmoderated projects in a few simple steps and start collecting unmoderated feedback by asking open-ended questions or designing tasks for respondents to complete on their own.
Video and Photo Responses	Capture the emotions, reactions, and decisions of your consumers with video and photo responses for your unmoderated surveys.
Insights	Gain understanding and find answers with augmented insights for every response with transcripts, sentiment analysis, tagging, and more.
Integrated Survey Link	Easily distribute your survey link with respondents with an email tool, post in a community or embed in any online survey tool.
Multiple Tasks	Create your survey with multiple questions and tasks for your target audience to complete all at once or come back to over time.

Creating Self-Captures Activity

You can start by navigating to your project's Self Captures tab, located below the Respondent tab. Then click on the 'New Activity' button.
You will now be directed to a page that allows you to enter the details and parameters of your Self Captures activity.
- Naming the activity helps to distinguish the activities in your project. The name won't be visible to respondents. Every activity must have a different name. The default name is 'My new activity 1' and so forth.
- A Welcome message can also be customized for your respondents.
Click on Add new tasks on the bottom left, type in the task or question, and then choose your response type.

NOTE: There is a maximum limit of 20 tasks per self-capture activity.

Video tasks can be set from 30 sec to 30 minutes
Photo tasks are automatically capped at 5 images per task
Text tasks are automatically capped at 2,000 characters
Document tasks will be converted to images for review, upon submission.
To add bold, italicize, underline, or lists to your tasks, highlight the section that needs emphasis, and choose the formatting for the text in the bar above.

After the activity 'Tasks' page has been completed in the editor, setting the requirements for the activity launch will come by clicking on save & next.

Supported File Types for Self Captures

.jpg
.jpeg
.png

.pdf (Portable Document Format, Adobe Acrobat)
.doc, .docx (Microsoft Word Document)
.ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation)

.mp4, .m4v (MPEG-4)
.mov (Quicktime)
.wmv (Windows Media Video)

Please note that larger files take more time to upload and if your connection is not stable the action may be terminated/broken. If respondents are having trouble when uploading a file or are unsure whether the file to upload is supported please don’t hesitate to have them contact us by submitting a request from our Help Center.

Adding Stimulus to Self Captures

Adding stimulus to a task allows researchers to add richer context to the questions and allows for a more robust response. Some use cases include:

Prompts
Guides
Directional

The following file types are supported:

.jpeg .png
.gif .mp4
.pdf .pptx
.docx

Instructions

You can start by navigating to your project's Self Captures tab. Identify the activity you want to edit and click 'Edit Activity' on the activity card menu
If you are starting a new activity, click on Create a new activity.
Click the 'Options' button below the text box of the task, and click on '+ Add Stimulus'.
You will be prompted to a page to upload your stim
You can click 'Save & Next' to save the stimulus task.

Best Practices for Self-Captures

Follow these best practices to ensure successful data collection:

Keep Instructions Detailed but Concise: Respondents often skim through instructions, so it's essential to be as specific as possible without overwhelming them. Provide clear, straightforward directions that explain exactly what they need to do while avoiding long paragraphs. Use bolding for important information.
List Follow-Up Questions in Advance: Since self-captures are asynchronous, respondents don't have the option of real-time probing like in live sessions. Ensure to include all potential follow-up questions in the task so respondents can provide detailed responses the first time. This makes sure you gather complete data without needing further clarification later.
Use Bulleted or Numbered Lists: Instructions are easier to read and follow when organized as bullet points or numbered steps. This visual format helps respondents focus on each task without missing important steps, leading to more accurate responses.
Incorporate Stimuli for Context: Whenever possible, include images, videos, or other stimuli that provide respondents with context for their tasks. This could be product images, concept visuals, or even short videos that illustrate the goal of the activity. Providing stimuli helps clarify expectations and makes it easier for respondents to understand what’s being asked of them.

Respondent Experience

Any tasks that include a stimulus will feature a prompt instructing the respondent to 'View Before Responding.' This enables the respondent to open the media file before recording or submitting their response. The respondent will not be able to see the stimulus while responding.

Deleting a task

You can start by navigating to your project's Self Captures tab. Identify the activity you want to edit and click 'Edit Activity' on the activity card menu
Click the 'Options' button below the text box of the task, and click on 'Delete task'.

If you delete a task after submissions have been received, the collected content will still be available to view on the 'Insights' page to refer back to.

Renaming an activity

Navigate to your Self Captures tab. Click on "Edit Activity." by clicking on the 3 dots located on the top right of your activity card.
You can go ahead and input the new name for the activity

Label Activities

Navigate to your Self Captures tab. Click on "Edit Activity."
Proceed to "Activity Settings." In the Activity Label section, select the desired Activity Label option you'd like to use.
After choosing a Pre or Post label, ensure all other settings are set up as you wish and click on Save.

Once set up, invites or reminders sent from the respondent hub will indicate the type of assignment, be it pre-work or post-work, thanks to the label.
To learn how to start Self Captures activity using labels, click here

Setting a Language

Navigate to your Self Captures tab. Click on "Edit Activity."
Proceed to "Activity Settings." Choose the language the respondents will respond in from the drop-down menu to help translate their responses. If no language is set, the language response will default to English (United States).

Setting a language will allow the platform to automatically translate to English any video & text submissions of your respondents. View our supported language here.
The Welcome Messages & Instructions should still be set up in the respondent native language and won't be translated.

Consent Forms

If your project has consent forms enabled on it, you will be able to assign any uploaded consent forms from the project to an activity. Each activity in the project can have up to one consent form assigned to it.

If you have multiple consent forms, and you need a respondent to add to an activity, it is best to upload all of those into one document to have the respondent sign all at once.

Activity Layout

Choosing the activity layout helps you decide how respondents will complete tasks in your activity.

All tasks - allows respondents to see all tasks and select which one they will complete first
Single tasks - respondent must complete the 1st task before moving to the next one

In an "all tasks" layout, respondents have the flexibility to revise their previous answers before submitting the activities.

Collect Live Interview Interest

Get more out of your qual research. Collect more feedback faster with a mixed method qual approach with both moderated and unmoderated feedback.

Homework Activities: Get the most out of respondents with feedback before and after your live conversations.
Casting: Get the best value from your research and talk to the best and most articulate respondents
Theme Exploration: Dig deeper and uncover key themes from self-captured feedback to live conversations

Choosing to collect live interview interest allows you to ask respondents if they would be willing to participate in a future Live Interview. Interested respondents will be sent through the tech check process and can be scheduled for a follow-up interview from their activity/survey response page.