In this article
Welcome to the Researchers training series for the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries platform!
This training series is designed to teach you the basics of working with Forsta Plus Digital Diaries. Each tutorial provides basic knowledge and includes a walkthrough video, as well as links to the relevant articles for each section.
During this training series, you will learn how to log in to the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries platform, set up your projects, create and schedule different activities for participants, upload participant lists into the platform and invite those participants to complete your project. This training will also cover how to keep track of your project during fielding, including analyzing any collected data and creating customized data exports.
1: Getting Started
This lesson outlines how to set up an account within Forsta Plus Digital Diaries. You will look at the standard e-mail invitation and the steps you need to take in order to create your profile, as well as how to navigate the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries platform.
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2: Creating and Managing Projects
This section outlines the process for creating a project within the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries platform. You will learn how to specify the name and link for your project, add other members to your team, and create different participant segments with unique field dates.
2.1: The Project Dashboard
This lesson covers what is available upon your initial login to the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries platform. In this lesson, you will focus on navigating your project list and learn about the different types of projects statuses that you can encounter in your Project Dashboard. You will also learn how to create your first project.
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2.2: Settings
Once you have created your first project,you may want to modify some of the settings for it. This lesson will cover how to change your project name, as well as the project link that you send out to participants. You will also learn how to set up a temporary password for your participants’ initial login.
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2.3: Segments
Forsta Plus Digital Diaries projects allow you to group participants based on different criteria by creating participant segments within your projects. In this lesson, you will learn how to create and modify segments, including setting their field dates, their primary points of contact, as well as their available languages.
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2.4: Adding Researchers & Observers
Now that you have learned to add participant segments to your project, you will learn how to add some of your research team members to help you manage these segments. In this lesson, you will learn what the different user types are and how to invite them into your project.
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2.5: Terms of Service
The final part of creating your project requires you to set Terms and Conditions for your participants to agree to if they want to take part in your study. In this lesson, you will learn how to set up Terms and Conditions for your project, and how to show these in different languages based on the languages that you have already set per segment.
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2.6: Digest
The Digest is a reminder system that sends out an e-mail to your participants containing a summary of any activities they have not yet submitted, or any new activities that are available to them. In this lesson, you will learn how to set up and customize your Digest e-mail.
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Note: The Digest email frequency can be decided by the researcher. It can be sent less frequently than daily.
3: Activities and Scheduling
In this section, you will learn how to create activities for your participants. Activities are collections of questions (or collectors) and other stimuli that allow you to either relay information to or request it from your participants. They can be created and scheduled per participant segment as either one-time-only or recurring exercises.
In the next few lessons, you will learn how to access the activity builder, how to build out activities using different collectors and stimuli, and how to schedule your activities so that they are available for participants. You will also learn how to set a specific order of completion for your activities, as well as the example activities stored in your activity library.
3.1: Activity Builder
This lesson will begin with a brief overview on how to access the Activities And Scheduling page, as well as looking at the different activity settings available. In this lesson, you will learn how to designate activities by device (as mobile and non-mobile). You will also learn how to share activities and how to set them to occur only once or as recurring, allowing participants to complete them multiple times.
Note: For access to mobile-enabled activities, please contact your Customer Success Manager.
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3.2: Collectors & Stimuli
In this lesson, you will learn about the different elements you can add to your activities. These elements are separated into two categories: Stimuli and Collectors. Stimuli allow you to present information to your participants using plain text, images, or videos, while Collectors allow you to request different types of information.
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3.3: Previewing Activities
Once you create your activities, you will need to schedule them in your calendar in order for them to be available to participants. This lesson outlines how you can post or unpost activities, as well as make edits to already-scheduled activities.
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3.4: Scheduling & Activity Chains
When posting your activities to the calendar, you can also set the order in which you want participants to complete them. Activity chains allow you to post multiple activities on the same day/week, but require participants to complete them one by one. Activity chains also allow for the randomization of activities, if needed.
In this lesson, you will learn how to create and use activity chains to manage activities for your participants.
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3.5: Activity Library
If you need ideas on what types of activities to use or don’t want to start from scratch, you can visit the Activity Library for ideas. In this lesson, you will learn how to add sample activities to your project and edit them to fit your needs.
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4: Uploading Participants
Now that you are finished setting up your project and activities, you need to start inviting participants to complete those activities. This section outlines how to manage participant invitations. Here, you will learn how to add individual participants or upload a pre-configured list of users to your Forsta Plus Digital Diaries project.
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- Adding a Single Participant
- Adding Multiple Participants at Once
- Creating Custom Profile Fields
- Inviting Participants
- Managing Participants
5: Explore
This section will cover the Explore area within the Forsta Plus Digital Diaries platform. The Explore area is the main reporting section for Forsta Plus Digital Diaries projects. In it, you can review the latest data submitted by participants, whether it is a fully submitted activity, or only videos, images, or text responses.
The video below offers an overview of the different tabs within the Explore area, as well as the different functionalities available, such as leaving comments underneath completed activities, filtering out your data, as well as tagging responses, and publishing downloadable reports. The Explore area also gives you access to your Inbox, where you can send direct messages to participants, rather than just commenting on their activities.
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- Project Overview
- Viewing Data in the "Explore" Area
- Giving Participants Feedback
- Tagging Responses (Researchers)
- Tallies to Closed-Ended Questions (Grids)
- Viewing and Downloading Videos
- Viewing and Downloading Images
- Text Analysis with the "Word Tree"
6: Findings
The Findings area is where you can find all of the downloadable reports that you publish via the Explore section. It offers different export types, such as Excel and Word documents, grid tallies for any closed-ended questions, as well as image sets. This section will cover how to work within the Findings area and manage your reports, as well as the different report statuses available.
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7: Concept Canvas
The Concept Canvas activity allows participants to dynamically interact with a presented image by placing pins on the image and leaving specific feedback. In this section, you will learn how to create and customize our Concept Canvas. You will also see the available reporting tools for the Concept Canvas.
Note: To enable Concept Canvas for your project, contact your Customer Success Manager.
7.1: Creating A Concept Canvas
In this lesson, you will learn how to create a Concept Canvas. In addition to the ability to add pins to your image, the concept canvas allows participants to add sentiments to their pins, as well as customizing the text that is displayed when adding a pin. Additionally, participants can label their individual selections to add more context to their selection.
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7.2: Concept Canvas Reporting
In this lesson, you will learn about the Canvas reporting options available with Forsta Plus Digital Diaries. When looking at your Concept Canvas report, you can look at selections as either individual pins or by generating a heatmap, which also shows selection frequency. In addition to that, you can filter pins by different criteria, such as the sentiment given by participants, the labels that they used when placing their pins, or the order in which they placed them.
You will also learn about the different export types available for Concept Canvas.
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