Diary studies upgraded: Dive into deeper discussions 

Diary studies offer a unique window into your participants’ lives. They let you see how your participants operate, think and navigate decisions in the real world. Most other study types rely on recall, which is valuable but misses that direct touch to opinions and feelings in the moment. The chance to drill deeper still is invaluable, and very possible.  

What are diary studies?  

Participants chronicle their day-to-day interactions with a product or service over a set period, often uploading photos, videos, or audio clips alongside text entries. The result is a rich narrative of customer experience, complete with vivid context and emotion. 

When they first started, diary studies were all about the written word, asking customers to write about their experience in a paper journal. Although that’s still an option, digital diaries are now the norm, and participants are requested to submit rich media content, like photos, audio recordings, or videos.

Recent advances in open-text analytics mean it’s easier than ever to analyze unstructured feedback. The ease of producing transcripts of audio and video files, allowing you to dig into them alongside textual entries or even survey responses, has resulted in a renewed interest in qual research.  

Read more about the advantages of diary studies: Digital diaries: Join your customer on their journey 

The future of digital diary studies 

Like the advancements online features gave diary studies, the next wave of change is ready to transform how you interact with your participants, and they with you.  

The concept of data integration in market research is well established and well understood to be a huge benefit to the research process, doubling the speed to insight and saving hours of manual work. What magic happens when you start integrating modes of research? You get something that looks like this: 

An integration between diary studies and online focus groups. 

This means you can schedule and conduct real-time, fully-fledged group discussions or one-on-one interviews (IDIs) directly within a diary study, without juggling separate platforms. Imagine kicking off a diary project to capture a week’s worth of experiences and then inviting those participants to a live video focus group or interview, all in the same interface. Researchers can seamlessly create, schedule, moderate, and later review these live sessions right from the diary project workspace. Participants don’t have to fumble with external links or new logins; they simply join the interview or group chat from the diary app or web portal they’re already using. 

This diary-discussion integration brings the best of both worlds and an entirely new data-collection experience. You get the depth of longitudinal, in-context feedback and can immediately follow up with face-to-face (virtual) conversations to probe further. It streamlines workflows by keeping all qualitative activities in one place, so you can gather, analyze, and visualize the data together.

No more siloed data or exporting of diary entries to prep for a separate focus group. Everything from a participant’s week-long journal to the recording and analysis of their live session is unified. This not only saves time, but it also adds contextual depth. For example, you might notice a diary entry about a frustrating experience; with one click, you can invite that participant to a live discussion to unpack their feelings in real time.

By combining techniques, researchers capture both the authentic, in-the-moment reactions from diaries and the nuanced, interactive probing of a focus group or interview. As Forsta’s Tobi Andersson puts it, this integrated approach creates “an easy-to-use space for two-way conversation that focuses on human connection”, capturing verbal and non-verbal cues – so brands can understand the “why” behind the diary data and act on it with confidence. 

Minimizing the limitations of diary studies 

New tech developments are tackling some long-standing limitations of diary studies. Integration with other modes, such as focus groups, breaks down barriers of communication and enables deeper data collection from an already rich source. Let’s explore some more: 

Integration with everything 

Plugging diary studies into a wider network of market research tools across the whole market research process streamlines every step. Solutions like Forsta’s Research HX super-speed research by allowing data to flow straight from collection to analysis to dashboarding and visualizations. Each stage benefits from a reduction in manual work, less chance for human error as data stays in one system, and faster speed to insights as reporting can update in real time. 

Scaling up 

While diary studies have traditionally been associated with small sample sizes and exploratory research, we’re breaking that mold by making Digital Diaries a heavy-duty tool suitable for large-scale, enterprise-grade projects that can scale up to 2,000 participants in a single diary project. Yes, you read that right – two thousand. This means you can effectively run a mixed qual-quant study within one platform: Thousands of people capturing qualitative feedback while still retaining the depth of a diary approach. This allows insights professionals to swim in a much bigger data pool without losing the storyline of individual customer experiences. 

AI-powered summaries 

Gone are the days of manual coding. Auto-generate a concise summary for any video or audio recording a participant submits. The platform’s AI will produce a written summary of the key points they mentioned, dramatically reducing the need for manual transcription and note-taking. The summaries are available in over 25 languages and are editable, meaning you can fine-tune them or integrate quotes into your reports easily. 

Global reach 

AI-driven translations for both activities and responses break down language barriers, so you can instantly translate diary entries or questions into a common language. This is a game-changer for multi-market research, accelerating project speeds and facilitating global studies and teams.  

New question types 

Self-reporting naturally comes with an element of bias. A diary is from our perspective, we want to be liked, we automatically filter ourselves to present the best version of us. 

Sprinkle in more question types to engage participants and gather data in a wider variety of formats for a full emotional picture. Present image-based multiple-choice questions (Image Select), ask them to rank items in order of preference, gather rating scale feedback (stars, emojis, Likert scales, etc.), or even deploy grid/matrix questions for comparing options. 

Why does this matter? It means you’re not limited to free-text diary entries or participant uploads. Within the flow of a diary study, you can integrate structured questions to get data on specific topics and accept video or photo uploads. These new formats provide quantifiable data points alongside rich narratives, adding another layer to your analysis.  

Collage Activity 

A standout is the Collage Activity, a creative exercise where participants can respond to a prompt by assembling images and text into a digital collage. It’s an unscripted, imaginative way for customers to show how they feel about a product or idea without having to articulate it in words. Collages can serve as a fun icebreaker or as a subtle avenue to express feelings about sensitive topics. In practice, researchers have used collages to help define user personas and uncover subconscious associations which a traditional Q&A might miss. 

   

Deeper insights, fewer barriers, greater impact 

Diary studies have always been treasured for the depth of insight they unlock, capturing customers’ behaviors and emotions in real life. Now, with the recent innovations in Forsta’s Digital Diaries, that depth is amplified by breadth and efficiency. You can collect in-the-moment, multi-modal feedback at scale, then pivot to in-platform discussions for even more context, all within one integrated system. The new capabilities like autosave, AI summaries, and flexible activities aren’t fancy add-ons; they directly tackle common pain points (missed data, tedious analysis, participant boredom) to improve data quality and researcher productivity.  

If you’re a decision-maker or power user in market research, it’s time to rethink what diary studies can do for you. With workflows streamlined and walls between methods broken down, you can focus on what matters: Uncovering and acting on insights that drive business decisions.  

See it for yourself: Book a demo