Moderator Best Practices for Dial Tester

The itracks dial tester is a great way to get in-time feedback on a video during a focus group.  Since this is an added layer to the standard focus group, there may be some additional considerations and processes to follow in order to have a successful outcome with your dial tester questions.

Device and Network Requirements

Preparing for your focus group

During the session:
Test Videos
Participant Instructions
Troubleshooting


 

Device and Network Requirements

Since the dial tester is an additional tool placed on top of your video group, as a moderator, you will want to ensure that your computer has the hardware requirements and that your internet connection is of high quality.  

We suggest you read through the following article to check that you have the requirements needed to conduct the research, Moderator Equipment and Network Recommendations

We also suggest that programs that may be using your bandwidth be closed, and any additional browser tabs that may be using your internet bandwidth and computer memory.

Preparing for your focus group

It is important that you understand how to use your dial tester exercise during your focus group, regardless of if you are setting it up or not.  Read through the following article to understand how you post a dial tester and what each user type sees when a dial tester is posted - Dial Tester in action - moderating and reading real time results

Once your dial tester is set up, we recommend that a testing session or a dry run be set up to allow you to interact with the dial tester before the actual session.
 

During the session
 

Test Videos

We recommend building in a test dial tester video to make sure participants understand how to complete the dial tester when you post the actual video tester and to rule out any technical issues that participants may have before you post your actual video.  itracks has a test video available if needed but any video 30-60 seconds should work for this purpose.

Participant Instructions

We also recommend including clear participant instructions that are stated before the first couple of dial testers in order to make sure participants understand what is needed from them once the video is posted with the dial tester showing for them.  Here is an example of what this may look like - feel free to add additional points that are important to your study.

 'In a few seconds, I am going to share a video with you.  You will see the video at the top right of your screen with a scale of numbers ranging from negative 5 to positive 5 on the bottom of your screen.  Please use this scale on the bottom of your screen to let me know how much you like or dislike the video.  

If you are feeling positive about the video, please select the positive numbers with the higher number indicating that you are more positive about what you are seeing and hearing.  If you are feeling negative about what you are seeing or hearing, please move the scale to the negative numbers. 

 Move the slider frequently and place it on neutral in the middle of the scale if you feel neutral about what you are seeing and hearing.'

 

Troubleshooting

If a participant indicates that they are having trouble viewing or seeing the video, or they are not seeing the scale at the bottom of the screen when you post the dial tester, usually a refresh to rejoin the session will fix this in most cases. 

 If that fails, check to make sure the participant does not have a VPN or proxy/work network that is blocking them from seeing the video on their machine.  Some VPNs block ports that are required to participate in a project correctly. VPN and security settings will be set by their company's IT department and in some cases, they may need to contact their IT team for support.

If they are not on a company network/VPN and are still not able to see the dial tester correctly after a refresh,  often changing browsers will allow them to join on a browser with different settings and allow them to see what they need to see.  At this time, we allow Chrome, Safari, and Edge to be used within the software. 

We also recommend that participants be on a laptop or desktop to allow for full access and viewability within a focus group.

If you have a concierge on your session, the support person assigned to your group will test that video and audio work for each participant who shows up before the start of your session. In the case where there are dial tester exercises set up, they will also do a test dial tester and make sure all participants can see and hear the video, choose their selection using the scale at the bottom of the screen, and that their responses appear in the reports that show up during the session.