When you create a study in Qualitative Insights, you can use the set up process as a guide to plan and organize your qualitative research. This will not only help you streamline the process of your research, but will also allow you to store the context of the study for your team's future reference. It also means you can apply metadata (such as research questions, segments, and tags) to your observations as you collect them, making analysis much easier later on.

To create a Qualitative Insights study, select 'Qualitative Insights' as the study type from the ‘Create a study’ modal.

When you create a new study, you'll land on the Sessions page in the Setup tab. This is where you'll add in your study objectives, study type, and any reference links you might have.

Noting down your objectives and references will help keep you on track as you move through your qualitative analysis journey, as well as give your team members context for the study if they take part in it.

You'll then create your sessions. A session is where you'll write down all your notes and observations, and keep all your data for each participant. Sessions can be individual interviews or tests with research participants, or be the outcomes of workshops or focus groups. You can capture your observations in real-time, or add observations retrospectively after your session has finished.

In each session, you can add in session details. You could use this section before an interview to record the location or time of the interview or include a link to an online meeting so you can quickly dial in. Or, you could use it during an interview to note down demographic information that you uncover during the session that you'd like to use to apply a segment, or write a note to yourself to follow up on later.

It's also a great place to write a quick summary of the session once you're done - it makes it easier for your future self to remember which of your 20 interviews had that point you really need to refer back to!

It's a good idea to prep your study as much as you can before you start your interviews or usability tests. If you can, get your segments set up so you can apply them to your sessions before you start. That means they'll be assigned to all the observations you take within each session.

Segments are used to describe your participants and are helpful when you want to filter your data later on during analysis.

Segments are usually set up based on the cohort or personas of your participants, such as their roles and experience levels, or even personality traits.

Being thorough and detailed in your setup not only helps you get organized before conducting your research, but it also saves you a lot of time when it comes to analyzing your data later.