OTX Online Testing Exchange Using Animated Characters To Make Surveys Fun
OTX — or the “Online Testing Exchange” is a market research company that does research online (alright, who doesn’t?). I happened to receive an invitation to one of their surveys today and had a couple of comments.
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?
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innovative techniques Tags: innovative techniques, Online-Testing-Exchange, OTX, research-providers, teen-research
