10 years of Impact Flexibility in place and method of working In 2013, Zoom was something your car did on the motorway. With enforced remote working acting as a catalyst in 2020, businesses and people have realised the benefits of operating more flexibly and that is also reflected in the way research is conducted, with in-person focus groups being adapted for online, for example. Sinead Jeeries, senior vice-president of customer transformation at Zappi, says: Businesses that properly think through the people, processes and systems they use to maximise the power of in-person moments for deep human connection, solve hard problems, and equip people to work asynchronously are clearly going to have a strong advantage. The same must be true for how practitioners approach research, notes Jeeries. There have always been innovators in this sector looking at finding new ways to have meaningful exchanges with research participants. This is about much more than moving an in-person focus group to an online focus group, but allowing us to achieve dierent goals and understand our attention-short, app-devouring audiences through both new and familiar tactics. We also need to ensure that, as we embrace these new tools, we are paying proper attention to making sure this increasingly remote data is properly representative of the audiences were trying to understand. She adds: Perhaps we have too often been afraid to move away from the approaches we know and trust. Now is a time to be brave but to be brave with clear purpose. Immersion in a physical location is still important for some projects, however, notes Thinktanks Stork. There are obvious lifestyle upsides to not spending half a week travelling to and from Heathrow, and to eating a proper meal at home after your Zoom group. Plus, decisions about method have become more deliberate than they were, say, 10 years ago. However, were in danger of heading not for real flexibility of location, but merely for less direct interaction in research and, in international research, for a less immediate understanding of place and context. No doubt todays younger researchers will still acquire a good skill set and will probably excel at digital interviewing, but they will miss out on a quick Mexico City supermarket visit to see their clients brands displayed, and on walking around the streets of Shanghai to see how people dress. In eect, such marginal observations produce a certain 3D aspect to getting the culture of the people interviewed, and may make the dierence between a memorable research project and just another project. 18 Impact ISSUE 40 2022_pp16-21_10 years of Impact.indd 18 Data privacy With the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal coming to light in 2018, an expanding regulatory sphere for data protection (namely, the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation) and growing awareness of data privacy have created unprecedented challenges for researchers and businesses alike. Ipsoss Page says: Ensuring consumer privacy and proper handling of personal data has resulted in a large rise in compliance teams, as GDPR and beyond becomes simple table stakes for running a business. Public awareness of privacy and, simultaneously, public apathy about it have risen with the digitisation of the economy in the past decade. Misinformation and disinformation Social media algorithms and the growth of networks have a huge impact on peoples lives, oering new ways of understanding people and conducting research. But they have also become channels for misinformation, allowing conspiracy theories and fake news to spread, and negatively impacting peoples lives and democracy as a whole. Behavioural science In the past decade, behavioural science has moved from academic pursuit to mainstream practice. For example, in the public policy sphere, it has been applied in the introduction of auto-enrolment workplace pensions. Within the industry, it has become part of the researchers toolkit. Using behavioural science techniques and technologies to understand and interpret consumer attitudes and behaviour is vital and, when applied to research solutions, they are hugely valuable for understanding and amplifying insights, says Kantars Ostler. Behavioural science layered with artificial intelligence applications will play an even greater role for insights in 2023. 13/12/2022 11:26