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With advances in technology, gaining and assessing opinions is now easier. Peter Lloyd judges the AV tools available
It's self-evident that the best way of finding out what people think of any given product or situation is to ask them. The difficulty is in how to ask them, because in business situations many staff will try to give the response they think their manager wants. Likewise, if it's a one-to-one meeting or led by a manager or a dominant personality then the complete truth might not emerge.
If you are asking staff for their opinion about how the company is performing, what they think it can do to improve its service, its product range, or even the concepts put forward for the latest marketing campaign then accurate results are essential.
That's where different AV techniques can help. The benefit of using technology to carry out research is that, used properly, it can provide objective results. Staff in a meeting who are being asked to vote on the best treatment for a new campaign may well be more honest if they can remain anonymous. Interactive response systems can let them do that.
But any research is only going to be as good as the questions t hat are asked - all the technology in the world won't help a company that doesn't know what to ask or how to ask it. It will, however, show up those deficiencies quickly and clearly.
MEETINGS WITH WHITEBOARDS
Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are a familiar feature in half the classrooms of UK schools, but they are not just an educational tool.
Using a projector, an interactive whiteboard and a laptop, a meeting can be organised so that materials or propositions can be explained (using PowerPoint or other graphics software) and then annotated on screen and saved. There's also no reason why only one person can interact with the material: rather than a moderator asking attendees their opinions and writing them up (and perhaps subjectively changing them), any participant in the meeting can walk to the board and make their comments.
Pros The good news about IWBs is that they allow a lot of information to be explained and commented on graphically and in a short period of time. The...