Qualitative Research

Following up on our Quantitative research we were asked in our groups to gather some Qualitative data using the Questionnaires we had handed out. I was looking forward to this as our group had already noticed something different in the way people filled in our questionnaires. So we looked into the 2 questions that had baffled us a little bit;
Is it important to stay close to home whilst attending university?
Does it have any effect on your decision to choose a university if the city has a lot more to offer than others?

So we created a ladder of choices in which we offered a lot of big named universities, in order to see what city, people who filled our questionnaire in wanted to attend the university of. We gather information from somebody who had left home to come to Liverpool to study and somebody who already lived in Liverpool who chose to attend the local university.

 

 

The participant simply had to place the university they would most want to attend with their favourite being on top of the ladder and their least favourite being at the foot of the ladder. The choices we gave the participants was; Liverpool Universities, Dublin Universities, Sheffield Universities, Newcastle Universities, Glasgow Universities, Manchester Universities, Birmingham Universities and London Universities.

 

We weren't very surprised in the results we received when our participant who had moved to Liverpool's top choice was Liverpool, however when we asked Rebecca (Our student from Liverpool) she had some surprising results:

 

Our results shown that Liverpool was actually her 3rd choice of university, so when we asked Rebecca why she eventually chose not to study in Newcastle or Dublin, she said it would be too big of a move to leave home, and when asked why the cities were in this specific order, both participants answers were similar, they weren't too bothered by living costs or distance from the university, their decisions were purely based on the reputation of the city and the cities nightlife, which also showed i can no longer defend fellow students about their reputation! They are only interested in alcohol!

 

But I did learn a lot about the power of Qualitative research and how important it can be to people using it, like if a university were to take note of my studies, they could advertise a night out for freshers when holding an open day? I don't know its interesting to look at and think just how you could use this type of research to gather information.

Nine Lives Media (Question 3)

For our 3rd and final question we were visited by a representative of Nine Lives Media.

The question we were asked was;
Which are the three most successful ever examples of cross platform television programming, how did viewers participate and most importantly, what did they gain from the experience? (I would anticipate answers such as the London Olympics/Paralympics & Embarrassing Bodies)

This I feel was similar to the first question, in terms of research due to it being largely about audience participation, but a totally different question to answer. I was also very confident about this question, as I felt I had a lot to offer Nine Lives Media as a fan of the types of documentaries they had produced and a fan of tv such as the Olympics and Embarrassing Bodies, so I think this question suits me a lot more than the previous 2, I'm quite eager to get going with this one actually and want to research into cross platform television.

ONTECA (Question 2)

For our second of the 3 questions we were visited by a representative from ONTECA, an company that creates free apps for smart phones.

The question we were asked was:
What new models are there for selling media? When people download so much media freely, what are people willing to pay for and how? What are and what can we learn from the best monetization mechanics for Freemium games on mobile?

After we were presented with this question I had a very good understanding of what the representative wanted from us, and I have a good knowledge of apps, as a user. I thought however it would be hard to present 15 minutes worth of presentation to show, as I think the app market is fairly new to the world and people have already thought of most ways to advertise their apps, there are still a lot of obvious advertising techniques that can be used for apps that have been used for other media, it would be interesting to research this question and I think I could do well with up to a certain extent but then struggle slightly with my presentation, so far I think the 1st question would be better for me, but this question is very do-able.

Digital Fiction Factory (Question 1)

Today we were set our first of 3 questions, and were visited by a representative from Digital Fiction Factory.

The question we were asked was;

The Internet, social media and other open systems have allowed for user generated content (UGC), crowd-sourcing and other forms of audience participation to prevail in digital media. But how do we translate these features into storytelling experiences, without treading on the toes of the author?

 

This presentation was about audience participation and i felt that this would be a good question for me to answer, I was very intrigued by the way how Lime Pictures and Conker Media to create storylines within storylines, and how the audience could control what would happen next, I hadnt seen much of this before and didnt think i had ever been involved in something like this, but at the same time i knew i may have been part of this via a social network or on YouTube without even noticing. I do have some ideas for this question and think it would be interesting to research it but there are still 2 questions to come so although i feel quite confident with this question, but we will see ...