Do-It-Yourself market research is a blessing to our industry, not a curse.  It is hopefully being used to elevate the role of consumer insights to the highest levels of corporate decision making, and when that happens, we all win.

With all the recent talk about “DIY” and industry protectionism, let’s focus on how to leverage best practices and industry learning.  The opportunity to shine are those instances where a potential DIY user has marketing savvy, but is relying on their software provider for market research discipline.  As we have advocated in “Sexy Questions, Dangerous Results?”, the notion of RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION is key.

As an example of low hanging fruit – hopefully we can all agree that an error message that does not highlight where the problem is on the screen, is more likely going to lead to the changing of answers and the risk of questionable data.  Here’s a quick example from a recent survey – the error message reads “Please complete the question”, but does not highlight where the problem lies (click on image to enlarge).

DIY is here to stay.  Let’s make it work.