First, OTX gets props for several things. First, they share a lot of their research results If you go to their web site, you can read all about teen shopping habits, teens and cell phones, movie survey results, etc. They seem to do a lot with kids and teens, which isn’t surprising given the cuteness of their interface (which I’ll explain in a moment).

When I started the survey, it was fairly traditional and put me through what appeared to be an extensive screener. The first time around I didn’t pass muster and was rejected…but…unlike a lot of survey engines, OTX has the special feature that allows you to press your back button and try other options until you are accepted. Originally, I thought this meant that it was giving me another chance to change my answers so I could get into the survey, but it appears that what is actually happening is that it is using the information I have already provided to see if I qualified for another survey (rather than simply giving me an error message and throwing me out).

What an efficient use of respondents — and great customer service too (there is nothing I hate more than knowing that there are folks who want to take one of my surveys and then having to send them away). Makes me want to think about if there is anything I can do in the system I use to do something similar.

Anyways, the first 8 questions or so were mostly screeners, and then I had the option to allow my kid to take a survey. Being that I’m just a big kid at heart anyways, I said yes. After a few more questions, and a guarantee that I wouldn’t reveal their secrets, the “real” survey began.

What was most interesting about the survey was that when asking the kids about their responses, the survey software would show a little animated fellow named Jake (shown on the right) who would talk (his lips would move) and play around with his skateboard while he spoke and waited for a response to his question. What a nice feature — not just for kids, but possibly even adults, who are probably just as likely to get bored with the surveys as the kids.

Anyways, according to the OTX web site, there are apparently several characters to choose from and even the opton to create your own.

Ordinarily I’m not one to be promoting full service research providers, but the technologies worth remarking on, so who can resist?

• OTX - Online Testing Exchange web site

• Who is doing it, how common is it?
• Why are they doing it?
• Why are some other people not doing it?
• Which modes work best together?
• When does it make sense to switch modes?
• What impact does it have on the data?
• What are the technical requirements?

One really neat concept I hadn’t thought much about was the idea of having a respondent start the survey using one mode (perhaps paper or the phone) and then have them finish the survey in another mode (usually the web). This has been found to help out when it is hard to retain respondents in one mode using a particular data collection method (perhaps they don’t want to hang out in your store for 20 minutes, or maybe they just want to get off the phone).

Multi-mode data collection will become especially useful as we adopt more mobile survey solutions — perhaps have the user start with a WAP based survey and finish up with a web based survey when they get home.

Read Tim’s full article at Meaning (PowerPoint).

Although I can’t tell from the image precisely what technology is being used to power the sort, it does have a very Web 2.0 feel to it that hopefully gives a sense of the types of fancy new user-friendly online survey technologies we can expect to see in the future.

Read the press release.

In my own experience, the greatest challenge to this type of a dashboard — which in some ways speaks to the potential to integrate customer satisfaction directly into a balanced scorecard type system in a meaningful way — is the ability to collect enough data on a regular basis to cause the "dials" on the dashboard to reflect something meaningful. 10 or 15 responses a day are simply not enough for a system that is meant  to be continuously updated.

On the other hand, there are applications where such a system might be somewhat useful and relatively easy to "keep fed." For example, if on the way out of the store there was a single question that customers could answer — either as they walked out the door or as they checked out — and if there were enough registers in the store — it might be possible to collect enough data to make the dashboard meaningful. Or maybe if there were a way to ask the question on customer cell phones as they walk out of the store (perhaps a little less realistic).

Read more about this article at IWRBlog.

Second Life is a virtual community much like a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) such as World of Warcraft, Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies except that instead of fighting monsters and completing quests your objective is…well…there isn’t really one. You buy property, meet people, simply fly around or create things. In fact, using the basic building blocks provided by the software you can create just about anything if you have enough patience and skill.

While most people build digital representations of physical things (like buildings, sculptures or stargates). Mario used his time and skill to create an online survey. In fact, he even set it up so that individuals who finish the survey are rewarded with in-game money.

Think about this in context with the recent findings of the Pew Internet & American Life project, where 52% of a broad-based, national sample agreed with the following:

“By the year 2020, virtual reality on the internet will come to allow more productivity from most people in technologically-savvy communities than working in the “real world.” But the attractive nature of virtual-reality worlds will also lead to serious addiction problems for many, as we lose people to alternative realities.”

The entire report (entitled “The Future of the Internet II“) is fascinating and contains a number of interesting predictions for the future (along with what people thinking of them). Definitely worth a read.

I love Mario’s experiment. And while it is probably true that it is just a little too early to jump on this technological bandwagon (unless you’re trying to do a survey about virtual communities and the people who use them, it is probably going to be difficult to come up with a sample that is relevant to your research questions) I think the time won’t be so far off when data collected in environments such as Second Life is the norm.

Read about Mario’s Second Life survey experience on his blog.
Watch a video of someone completing the Second Life survey.