Vision Critical Unveils Survey Collaboration Solution

In Canada, research and technology firm Vision Critical has introduced a tool that allows researchers and their internal clients to work together on a single copy of their online survey - collaboratively editing at the same time.

The new 'Firefly Surveys' tool facilitates the creation, editing and deployment of surveys by multiple parties, which Vision Critical claims can shave days or even weeks off the survey development process.

Using this solution, researchers can check who is working on which questions, exchange messages directly to discuss changes and leave Post-it like notes on any question in the survey. The tool also allows users to set different permission levels, enabling some team members to edit anything, while others can only leave comments or suggestions.

In addition to helping multiple people work together to develop a survey, the tool enables intuitive authoring using Microsoft Silverlight to shape the survey as it interprets questions as open ends or single choice, based on what is being typed.

This feature is complemented by a reporting and analysis tool which allows researchers to sort and recode variables, run cross-tabs and create standard reports that tap into the real time data.

'While the research industry is one of the biggest potential benefactors of collaboration, there just hasn't been a tool that brings it all together,' states Jason Smith, President, Product Innovation (pictured). 'This is a product born of our clients' demand: a new, entirely collaborative way for novice and expert researchers alike to create, deploy and analyze surveys.'

Web site: www.visioncritical.com