Jigsaw Research won innovation of the year for an automated research tool using messaging service WhatsApp. WhatsApp has allowed Jigsaw to carry out research in a more natural environment for the participant and engage with a wider range of people demographically. Over two billion people worldwide use WhatsApp in more than 180 countries.

The company’s Whycatcher platform allows Jigsaw to quickly set up new quantitative or qualitative survey or diary tasks, prepare questions, validations, reminders and invite individual users or groups to take part.

A typical survey format provides users who have signed up for a project a set of instructions and the first question, plus additional stimulus if required. Users can provide as much content as they wish for each question. Incentives can also be automatically assigned. All of the user’s involvement in the project happens through WhatsApp.

Additional features include: language-specific tasks; the chaining of sub-tasks; automated transcription for any incoming video or audio files; text/sentiment analysis; profile/segmented groups creation for question variations; and simultaneous tasks, even with the same participant at the same time. The platform can receive text, emojis, images, video, audio and location content.

Jigsaw has received approval from WhatsApp to allow it to send and receive messages, and has conducted more than 50 WhatsApp-driven tasks. More than 100,000 messages have passed through the service.

Sue van Meeteren, managing director of Jigsaw, said: “We are so proud to win this award, and especially proud of the WhatsApp innovation that our team has developed.

“For researchers, our automated WhatsApp facility enables access to huge swathes of the world’s population using a tool that is completely intuitive and already part of their lives. For participants, it means they can participate in research in the most natural way ever.

“This innovation changes the medium from research platform to social media application and we feel that it has the potential to make a huge impact on the industry.”

The full list of MRS Awards 2020 winners can be found here. 

(Pictured: the Jigsaw Research team)