GfK TechTalk is developing a new series of posts around the work we’re doing to marry information and communication in a story of beauty, creativity and good research sense.  Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing our examples of work we’ve built around infographics, animation and video, all designed to help overcome the challenge of information overload, help businesses see more from research, and capture our audiences’ imaginations when telling stories about technology, ideas, business and society.

The last time you searched for information online, how many returns were there?  And the last time you needed to find some evidence to support an argument or theory, how many books, magazines and publications did you consult?  What about businesses, how many sources of data do you think they track, monitor, and purchase on an average day to understand what their customers think and want, what the market is doing and what their competitor’s next moves may be?  The answer is lots.  Heaps.  Tons.  More than, perhaps, we can imagine.

Technology cycles tend to last about ten years, from the personal computing era of the ‘80s, through the desktop computing era of the ‘90s to the mobile computing era of the early 21st century. Each has brought more computing power, better user experiences, lower prices and expanded services to more people. And with every new technology comes new opportunities for the research industry. None more so than the saturation of mobile phone ownership and the increasing power and capabilities of the modern smartphones.

GfK has been investigating various ways that mobile technology can be leveraged for research purposes, and this is a brief introduction to a few of our recent initiatives.

Taking mobile-based surveys mainstream: a Nokia case study

It’s an exciting time to be involved in the digital world; only recently we were still developing .mobi websites, now it’s an annoyance when we get forced to a .mobi on a smartphone browser. We were sending each other MMS messages, now we just email them directly from our email account. Our number one reason to upgrade a phone was for more mega pixels from the built-in camera, now it’s less about the hardware and more about software.

Such rapid changes in technology force the online space to adapt and change to suit how the user wants to access content, one area that has maintained a steady evolution is online video technology.