PR data bites

Survey reports, telling us how new technologies are being used, are part of our media landscape. We take what we can from their snapshots of people’s lives, remembering that their publication is often a PR exercise for a company or organisation. Sometimes somewhat uninterpretable data detracts from their role as PR pieces, at least if we think a little further than the press-released headlines. Recently, the data security company, Garlik, published snippets from its survey of internet use, including the finding that internet users in Wales blog more than in the rest of the UK. Earlier this month Carphone Warehouse, working in partnership with London School of Economics, released its annual survey of mobile use, Mobile Life, (now in its fourth year) showing, among other things, that although Britain leads the texting league in Europe, the French are more likely to end a relationship with a text than the Brits. It’s hard to know what to make of data bites like these, and probably the best option is to make as little of them as possible. We often can’t tell the full story behind them, as Carsten Sørenson, one of the LSE academics commenting in the Mobile Life report concedes.

But these data snapshots can grow legs and take on a life of their own, sometimes unfairly. For example, 18 months ago easyMoney published a survey of 18-29 year-olds, dubbing them the ‘Won’t wait, won’t do generation’ because they often miss doctor, dentist or hair appointments, and sometimes social engagements, rather than queue or wait for them. The behaviour was attributed to conditioning by high-speed interactions on the web and, yes, the charicterisation of an impatient generation has an intuitive ring to it. But what about the 30+ generations? I don’t know anyone, of any generation, who enjoys queuing for an answer from a telephone help-line. And I expect many pensioners would join the 18-29s in abandoning their shopping trolley rather than waiting at an understaffed supermarket checkout. We don’t know if there are inter-generational differences in impatience, because easyMoney confined their research to their target age group, found answers they might have expected, and didn’t look any further.

Large scale surveys have their place but they are a limited methodology. The set of questions that can be asked is relatively fixed. There’s no opportunity for probing behind the answers. And that’s before we get on to the question of how accurately people can self-report on past behaviour.

So its refreshing to see that the Mobile Life report includes some video diaries of mobile phone users, as a supplement to their report. The diaries aren’t linked topically to the report itself, they don’t have international coverage and are collected from individuals who have agreed to spend a week living without their phones. One might argue that they are contrived to elicit people’s emotive responses and don’t show phone use in context. Nevertheless they are a step away from the over-certainty of quantitatively-based reports, and give an insight into the less-than-tidy world of real people’s technology use. This kind of reporting doesn’t have the impressive numbers behind it that quantitative research carries; even with relatively small numbers of people it’s labour intensive to do; it requires a subjective integrity to extract an accurate summary representation of what has been captured on video, often over many hours. But in my opinion, even with its potential practical and intellectual flaws, it’s powerful and potentially more memorable than data bites.

Which it why I found MIT Technology Review’s recent interview of Twitter’s founder, Evan Williams, and two (very articulate) Twitter users so appealing. If you had not understood the potential for ‘ambient intimacy’ that Twitter enables, the real user experiences described in the video would go a long way towards convincing you. Fantastic PR. And not a data bite in sight.

Entry Filed under: Understanding users