Submitted by Steve on Wed, 2009-02-25 23:00.

One of the key concepts and features in Revelation is Activities. Activities serve as the conduit for getting the information you want from your participants, understanding participant behaviors, experiences and emotions. Every month we will feature an especially useful activity.

This month we are going to focus on a great activity for capturing participant behaviors. Behavioral activities tend to be diaries or journals where participants record what they did at a given time. The challenge with behavioral activities is making sure participants capture what you want them to, and preventing the activities from getting dull and repetitive.  We have a great activity for capturing behaviors, it's called 'Moments' and it can make diaries a lot more fun and engaging. 

Let's imagine that we are doing an online Immersive Research study and we want to find out when people eat brownies. Actually, what we really want to understand is not only when people eat brownies, but also what occasions they think brownies might be good - even if they don't actually have a brownie and choose something else. 

This is perfect for a' Moments' activity. Here's how it would read for the participant:

Today I am going to introduce you to an activity called BROWNIE MOMENTS. What are BROWNIE MOMENTS? BROWNIE MOMENTS are:

1. Any occasion in which you personally are eating a brownie. (I'll want to see at least one!)
2. Any occasion during the week in which there could be a brownie but isn't.

Pretty simple!

I would like you to keep A BROWNIE MOMENTS PHOTO DIARY. Every time you encounter a BROWNIE MOMENT, I would like you to do the following:

- Take a photo or photos of THE BROWNIE MOMENT using your digital camera.
- Post the photo that best illustrates the occasion to your journal.
- Explain where you are, who you are with (if anyone) andwhat is going on.
- Explain what makes a BROWNIE appropriate for this occasion.
- Explain what a BROWNIE adds (or would add) to the occasion.

This activity works amazingly well for many different topics. Everyone's had 'moments' in their lives. This conceit really crystalizes what we are after, and always brings a smile to people's faces.

Revelation was built to make these kinds of activities easy for researchers to create and analyze -- and easy for participants to complete. Get in touch or sign-up for a tour  to see how!