At Edentify we're always on the lookout for ways to do research better. We know from experience that some of our richest insights come when people are given the opportunity to express themselves, either through their own written words or through images. These types of responses provide a deeper understanding of what people are doing and why, as they allow people to show their own original thoughts.

The problem with this type of response is that it takes a lot longer to analyse and interpret. With fewer parameters and boundaries, responses can vary dramatically and we often see very random and diverse replies and images. Making sense of these requires us to identify common themes and trends and decipher the meaning and motivations behind them.

The first part of this analysis – the identification of themes and trends – is often particularly time consuming. Fortunately, a range of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have been integrated into our market research platform. These tools utilise "machine learning" to help us identify and establish patterns.

We use machine learning to help us to quickly identify written words, phrases and sentiment. This greatly reduces time taken to interpret open text replies in research studies. It also allows us to automate our approach to text mining in ongoing tracking studies.

We also use AI tools for image and video recognitions. We can identify people, scenes, objects and activities in images and videos posted in our online focus groups. This allows us to again quickly identify patterns and apply filters to assist with interpretation.

Ultimately what this technology does is handle the time-consuming work quickly, to free up our researchers to do what they do best – think and come up with answers to our clients' questions. Which means better and more insightful research.