Try as we might, most of us are guilty of cramming too much data into our research reports and presentations. But why is this so bad? Can’t we help the reader along with executive summaries and a concise narrative in headlines, and all the extra stuff pushed into appendices? Why not offer details and high…
This week, after nine months of intensive study and practice, we published our Summer 2014 Newsletter with a feature article on How to Make Spectacular Infographics. It offers tips and tricks and some how-to insights. It is based on a company-wide internal initiative launched last fall to develop an infographic summary of research findings for…
Last week I learned about a surprising niche of marketing specialists that I never knew existed: Consultants who fix terrible reports written by market research vendors. Not to toot our horn too loudly, but I received this note from Gary Schmidt, Chief Catalyst of West End Consulting, who does just this type of consulting: Joe,…
A couple weeks ago we wrote about the crucial need to have (and ideally review) your raw data. We pointed to an article in the New York Times Magazine about a prominent professor in social psychology who faked his data and never provided the raw data for his colleagues and co-authors to review. What we…
Last week, Versta Research celebrated its 5th birthday—an important milestone in a twenty-year journey that has involved rigorous training and building significant capabilities that help clients solve research problems. <<Applause! Singing! Cake!>> “Speech! Speech!” Hmmmm, a speech. . . . Well, recently we formulated new year’s resolutions and described where we are headed as we enter the second half…
When customers talk about wanting faster and cheaper research, we’ve learned they’re not clamoring for all research to be faster and cheaper than ever before. Rather, they’re looking for new methods and niche solutions that fit specific problems they face. The distinction is crucial, because the first pushes us to automate, routinize, outsource, and make…
A few weeks ago, The Patient, a peer-reviewed medical journal, published an article based on findings from two surveys conducted by Versta Research. This follows on the heels of a poster presentation last June at the annual meetings of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), and another one just prior to that at meetings sponsored by…
We have been experimenting with the idea and the process of using infographics for all our research studies at Versta. Infographics are not easy, because they require careful attention to the data, to the succinct story that the data tells, and to graphic design. But so far I have been struck by how compelling research…
Does this sound familiar? I hope not, and I am happy to report that I have never encountered a business manager or senior executive who would say that research is stupid. Instead they might use words like ineffective, off-target, expensive, irrelevant, over-complicated, unhelpful, and so on. Indeed, there is a lot of research that is…
Whenever I see a chart like this, which shows proportions of a whole changing over time (or in PowerPoint language, a time series of 100% stacked bar charts): I picture to myself how much more visually compelling it would be if it were done in R, like this: This second chart is not just more…