In college, I took a course called "Finance for Non-Finance Majors" (I think the department head lost out on his preferred "Finance for Dummies" title). It's a good principle though--we aren't all going to be accountants or marketers or designers, but it can be useful as a small business owner, solopreneur, or anyone who collaborates with these functions to have a working knowledge of some of the principles and tools of other disciplines. 
 
For me, working in consumer research and insights, graphic design is a key complementary discipline. I firmly believe that market research needs great graphic design like a cupcake needs frosting. Great design pulls in your audience, helps you clearly communicate the story and makes the content more engaging.
 
To that end, I often do work with professional graphic designers to help take my decks and reports to the next level. But I don’t always have the time or the budget to do that or frankly, sometimes I just need a deliverable that’s “good enough”. Over the years as an independent insights consultant, I’ve discovered a handful of resources that can make marketing my own business and creating proposals and reports for others more beautiful, more interesting and just overall, more professional-looking.
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​Icons
Something I’ve picked up from working with actual designers is that a few, well-placed icons in a consistent style and color palette can really add that final level
of polish to a report or other deliverable. I use The Noun Project and find it valuable enough to have actually ponied up for a paid subscription (very          
reasonable at $40/year currently).
 
Sometimes icons are purely decorative, but they can work harder too. For example, if you use specific icons consistently throughout a report to represent particular consumer groups, those icons can stand in for text in complicated chart or graphics to make them easily readable.

​Stock photography
There is a lot of terrible stock photography out there. To avoid it, you basically have two choices. One, you can pay for a subscription to a high-quality stock image service like Adobe Stock or Shutterstock. That may be a good option if you need lots of images for commercial use, but it’s not cheap.
 
Alternately, if you just need images occasionally and they don’t have to be super-specific, there are a few great, free stock photo sources. Two that I frequently use are: Unsplash, which has a beautiful, searchable website, and Death to Stock which sends free unique photos out in themed packs via email. Be sure to credit the creators appropriately (each site has their own guidelines).

​Fonts
Here’s what I know about special fonts: not using them can make materials look generic, but using them inappropriately makes you look like a complete idiot. I prefer to risk erring on the generic side, especially since I’m typically dealing with client-facing deliverables (vs. creative marketing output). That said, if you’re feeling brave, you can find lots of free and unique fonts on Dafont.
 
Just remember that if you’re using a non-standard font, there’s a good chance it won’t look the same on someone else’s computer in a document (unless they have also downloaded the same font). When it doubt, send the document as a PDF to preserve fonts.

​Infographics
Here’s an area I would love to grow my own design expertise—creating infographics! There’s a reason information presented in this format gets shared so much online—if done right, it’s a fun and engaging way to communicate data.
 
If I decide I simply must create my own infographic, the best option I’ve found is Venngage. They have a basic selection of free infographic templates that you can play around with online to create a custom version. If you love it, there are also paid subscriptions that give access to all the premium templates as well ($19/month for an individual). If you’re interested in data visualization more broadly, I also suggest you check out Viz-Fest, which is a (free) webinar series on the topic.

Photo editing
If you are working with stock photography (or your own), you’ll likely need photo editing software at some point. If you don’t have the need level or expertise for an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, etc.), you can stay in the Adobe family with Photoshop Elements (one-time purchase), which is a more basic and user-friendly version of Photoshop.
 
There are a few good, free online photo editing sites as well. I recommend Fotor or Pixlr (the latter also has links on its homepage to free vector editor, fonts, and graphics sites). One of my most common image editing needs is just to reduce the file size of an image, particularly for use in email. The interface could use a little design help itself, but this free Image Optimizer site has always done the trick for me.

​​If you work in market research (or marketing or any related disciplines), I highly recommend that you find an awesome freelance graphic designer or design firm to partner with, if you don’t work for a company with those resources in-house. Working with designers and seeing their creations is probably the best way to build your own eye for design. And for everything else, I hope these design tools and resources can help fill the gaps! 

Each year, Greenbook publishes the GRIT Report, a summary of market research industry trends based on a global survey of client and supply-side researchers. The findings are always insightful and help me better understand which research trends are really in play today and what’s coming next. Here are a few highlights from the most recent report that are particularly meaningful, along with some commentary from my experiences.
 
What really matters in consumer research?

• The number one answer here is “trust in the results”, which covers a multitude of underlying factors. It implies a strong relationship among partners, high-quality sampling and survey techniques, and expert analysis. I would argue that the other highly-rated items: sample/panel quality, proven methodology, and participants’ engagement, are all just drivers of the first.

 
Which trends are hype and which are game-changers?

• According to the survey, global researchers are most excited about automation, big data, and storytelling from the latest crop of market research buzzwords. I agree with automation—as noted in a previous post on industry trends, there’s a place for automating processes that are repetitive or don’t require much interpretation. The trick for smart researchers will be knowing where and how to best use it.

• Buckets of e-ink have already been spilled on “storytelling” recently, but for research specifically, I see it as a cry from the end-users of research to make results more engaging, easy to understand and act on, and sticky for their organization. Specific ways to execute that include: a high level of synthesis in reporting (weaving together multiple data points into a cohesive narrative), the use of infographics and other graphical approaches to make data easily digestible, and the integration of direct consumer perspective (e.g. videos, pictures, quotes, etc.).  

• In the “hype” category, researchers place: AI, marketplaces, VR/AR, and attribution analytics. I can’t help but wonder if AI (artificial intelligence) lands here because people don’t know exactly what it means in a research context. If that option were to be renamed machine learning, I feel like it would shift into game-changing territory. Practical applications include: text analytics and sentiment analysis, algorithm-driven online “qualitative” interviewing, and automated facial coding/emotion analysis.

 
What are client’s unmet needs from research suppliers?

• Number one on the list is “recommending business actions based on the research”, which I think is driven by two factors. One, most supplier-side researchers writing these reports have never worked on the client side so they may not know what an actionable business recommendation really means, or at least, how to frame it in a way that will be compelling within the client organization. Report writing is also typically handled by more junior employees in large research firms. A senior person might swoop in to add recommendations and present the report, but if they didn’t do the deep analysis, are they really in the best position to do that? 

• The second reason for this gap is that many client-side researchers don’t invest in developing the business knowledge of their supply-side partners. If the client is working with a massive multi-national research firm, it frankly may not be worth their time given high levels of turnover. In my previous corporate roles, I’ve trained junior supplier partners many times only to have them be transferred to another business by the time they were getting proficient in my category!

• A good solution to this need is building strong, consistent supplier-client partnerships. Personally, I think this is easiest to accomplish with an independent research consultant (I would say that, wouldn’t I?!) or a smaller, more boutique research firm. There should be a direct correlation between the amount of time a client invests in educating a supplier about their business and the quality of their business recommendations!

 
You can learn more by reading the full GRIT Report (free to download). If you’re in the market research industry, I also encourage you to sign up for the GRIT Panel to participate in future industry surveys and receive advance copies of the reports in your inbox. 

I recently attended the inaugural West Coast Quirk’s Event in Irvine, California, a market research industry conference focused on “big ideas, real-world solutions”. Looking back, the unofficial theme of the presentations I saw seemed to be: let’s get closer!
 
This played out in multiple ways: get closer to reality with new ways of collecting data, including in-the-moment research, get closer to consumers/customers with co-creation and empathy in research, and finally, get closer to seeing the whole picture with mixed methods and data integration.
 
Here are a few more specifics and examples from the conference to bring these themes to life.
 
In-the-moment research ensures authenticity in data collection

• Dave Decelle, Netflix, shared his experiences with using in-the-moment video diaries to learn about when and what people are watching video, without recall bias. To make it even more true to life, the team started with their own internal customer data to identify actual viewing behavior trends and then created customized schedules to push surveys out in prime viewing periods.

• Layla Shea, Upwords, reinforced the need for in-the-moment research by highlighting the differences between stated intentions and reality in her presentation, “The Road to Ruin in Paved with Stated Intentions”. Humans are notoriously inaccurate with recalling memories as well as predicting their own future behavior. She gave examples of using digital journaling to conduct in-the-moment and in-context online qualitative research.

• Kelley Styring, Insight Farm, shared how she uses “selfie ethnography” and digital missions as applications of behavioral science principles in research. In addition to conducting the research, these techniques can also be applied as a screening tool. For example, she might ask participants in a multi-phase research project to refer a friend and then “audition” that person via a digital ethnography assignment.

 
Co-creation and shared experiences compress timelines and foster empathy

• David Lundahl, InsightsNow, talked about the trend of corporations moving from linear to “spiral” innovation approaches, which is requiring a parallel shift in research approaches. Some of their new approaches include: testing all aspects of a proposition at once, relying more on behavioral (vs. claimed) insights, and the use of wireframes/prototypes earlier in the process. They provided a case study of a 3-day iterative design sprint with concept co-creation, prototype-matching, and a larger-base validation step, which saved the client about six months versus their traditional process.

• Catherine Cooper, EmpathyWise, shared a compelling case study from a financial services client seeking solutions for the under-banked, applying the design thinking framework. In the Empathize stage, they did one-on-one interviews with customers using metaphor elicitation and other projective techniques. The resulting customer stories gave deeper understanding and new inspiration for the client team, leading to the development of a totally new business model for that target audience.

• Debbie Balch, Elevated Insights partnered with Gail Tomiak, USAA to share the story of how they brought USAA customers to the company’s executives in an interactive, conference-style one day event. The executive group interacted with 100 current members in a combination of face-to-face and virtual conversations. This event brought the USAA members to life in a new, richer way for participating company leaders, replacing facts and figures with faces and stories. Executives walked away inspired, energized and full of new ideas, solutions and opportunities.

 
Mixed methods and data integration provide holistic insights

• Candice Rab and Becky Wu, Luth Research, shared an example of their consumer Pathways to Purchase methodology which combines multiple research modalities to truly capture the entire process. In addition to traditional qualitative and quantitative research, they also have access to digital passive tracking data (across devices) to understand search, social and other online behavior. This approach also integrates geo-fencing and geo-tracking capabilities to capture brick and mortar behavior, allowing true omni-channel insights.

• Evencia Leite, TrendSource, Inc., shared an insightful case study about their work on the Pokémon brand that focused on multi-source integration. The client had a very broad set of objectives, ranging from key driver of retail execution all the way to new product opportunities, so the agency designed a multi-prong learning plan to provide holistic insights, including both primary and secondary quantitative data (e.g. retail audits, panel surveys) as well as qualitative approaches (e.g. customer intercepts, shop-alongs).

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• Tyler Kettle, IBM, talked about their need to move from large scale projects that meet the needs of the few to continuous, customizable research. To accomplish this, they initially developed an online research community, which has since evolved into their “Always-on Intelligence Platform” which encompasses: social monitors, insight platforms, bi-weekly pulse surveys, and deep-dive custom research, as needed.