Happy Market Research Podcast

Zoë Dowling, SVP of Research at FocusVision on Elements of a Good Participant Question

Episode Summary

My guest today is Zoë Dowling, SVP of Research at FocusVision. Founded in 1990, FocusVision offers a technology suite that enables both qualitative and quantitative research.  Prior to joining FocusVision, Zoe served as an executive at Kantar and the US Census Beuro. Additionally, she was an Associate Lecturer at the University of Surrey. Find Zoë Online: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/Zoëdowling/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/Zoëdowling Find Jamin Online: Email: jamin@happymr.instawp.xyz  LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil  Find Us Online:  Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp  LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch  Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp  Website: www.happymr.com  Music: “Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com This Episode’s Sponsor:  This episode is brought to you by Lookback. Lookback provides the tools to help UX teams to interact with real users, in real-time, and in real contexts. It’s Lookback’s mission to humanize technology by bridging the gap between end-users and product teams. Lookback’s customers range from one-man teams building web and app experiences to the world’s largest research organizations, collectively ensuring that humanity is at the core of every product decision. For more info, including demos of Lookback’s offering, please visit www.lookback.io.  [00:00:03] My guest today is Zoë Dowling, SVP of Research at FocusVision.Founded in 1990, FocusVision offers a technology suite that enables both qualitative and quantitative research. Prior to joining FocusVision, Zoe served as an executive at Kantar and the US Census Beuro. Additionally, she was an Associate Lecturer at the University of Surrey. Tell me a little bit about your parents, where you grew up, and how that's impacting what you're doing today. [00:00:35] Zoë: So my parents are philosophers, which obviously made for interesting dinner conversation. And how they impacted- one of the big things that impacted I think exactly where I am today and my interest in- strong interest in culture, technology, and of course, I bring that together with research and understanding people and life is that we- when I was about five or six, we moved to South Africa. And one of the interesting things was that moving so far away from family and in those times, in the '80s, we didn't have a landline at home. And even if we did, to actually do an international call, you actually had to go to one of the- we lived in a very rural area. There was only two hotels, and we went to one of them to place a call with international operator to speak to my grandmother on her birthday. So this was the most exciting event. So birthdays and Christmases. We can get in the call, go to the local hotel, to actually place this long distance call,

Episode Notes

My guest today is Zoë Dowling, SVP of Research at FocusVision.

Founded in 1990, FocusVision offers a technology suite that enables both qualitative and quantitative research. 

Prior to joining FocusVision, Zoe served as an executive at Kantar and the US Census Beuro. Additionally, she was an Associate Lecturer at the University of Surrey.

Find Zoë Online:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/Zoëdowling/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Zoëdowling

Find Jamin Online:

Email: jamin@happymr.instawp.xyz 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazil

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil 

Find Us Online: 

Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp 

Website: www.happymr.com 

Music:

“Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com

This Episode’s Sponsor: 

This episode is brought to you by Lookback. Lookback provides the tools to help UX teams to interact with real users, in real-time, and in real contexts. It’s Lookback’s mission to humanize technology by bridging the gap between end-users and product teams. Lookback’s customers range from one-man teams building web and app experiences to the world’s largest research organizations, collectively ensuring that humanity is at the core of every product decision. For more info, including demos of Lookback’s offering, please visit www.lookback.io. 

[00:00:03]

My guest today is Zoë Dowling, SVP of Research at FocusVision.Founded in 1990, FocusVision offers a technology suite that enables both qualitative and quantitative research. Prior to joining FocusVision, Zoe served as an executive at Kantar and the US Census Beuro. Additionally, she was an Associate Lecturer at the University of Surrey. Tell me a little bit about your parents, where you grew up, and how that's impacting what you're doing today.

[00:00:35]

Zoë: So my parents are philosophers, which obviously made for interesting dinner conversation. And how they impacted- one of the big things that impacted I think exactly where I am today and my interest in- strong interest in culture, technology, and of course, I bring that together with research and understanding people and life is that we- when I was about five or six, we moved to South Africa. And one of the interesting things was that moving so far away from family and in those times, in the '80s, we didn't have a landline at home. And even if we did, to actually do an international call, you actually had to go to one of the- we lived in a very rural area. There was only two hotels, and we went to one of them to place a call with international operator to speak to my grandmother on her birthday. So this was the most exciting event. So birthdays and Christmases. We can get in the call, go to the local hotel, to actually place this long distance call, international call. And it was incredibly exciting, but it brought this kind of communication because then it was the wonder of- wow, I'm speaking to somebody that's 5,000 miles away. And you can look at how technologies change. Think about that. In the '90s, email, I remember I was in Scotland and my parents were in South Africa, and I was emailing them. It was like this is incredible. I'm not waiting three weeks for this blue air mail letter. And then the first time that I ever did instant message chat, it was like- it was mind blowing. That sounds crazy today. You think of young people growing up and even young people in the work force. The internet's always just been there. Whereas I remember how pivotal it was to actually bridging that gap in communication. Which is a long kind of winded way of saying all of these kind of experiences and also the culture element coming in. I lived in a very, very different culture, and so looking at South African culture and looking at British culture and now I've been in the US for 15 years, and so American culture,