QualNotes is a digital research tool tailored for the social sciences and humanities researchers and students, particularly useful for human geographers and design thinkers. It is designed to assist in fieldwork, providing a range of functionalities to facilitate data collection.
The app lets users organize their data collection efforts in project folders that offer real-time collaboration capability. This makes it particularly adequate to teach for example mobile walking methods during a class enabling the student not only to listen to the explanations of the teacher but to follow how they build a digital walking map in real time.
Within a project folder, there are three ways to collect data: Mobile Mapping ("Maps"), Interviews and Focus Groups ("Interviews"), and Participant Observation & Autoethnography ("Participant Observation"). These tools cater to a variety of data collection needs that are the foundation of publishing qualitative research papers as well as conducting design thinking fieldwork.
The Mobile Mapping feature provides a practical solution for capturing geographical data such as geotagged photos, notes, and audio notes. The Interviews tool simplifies the organization, recording, and playback of an interview because the questions can be timestamped during the recording. The app also includes a feature called (‘Interview Guide’) that enables the collaborative preparation of a list of interview questions (the interview guide) that can be reused by many interviewers. The Participant Observation tool offers the capability to record geotagged and timestamped notes, photos, and audio notes.
Additional features of QualNotes include Photo Elicitation during an interview. This allows researchers to use photographs to stimulate discussion or reflection during the recording of an interview or focus group exercise.
QualNotes has application uses in social sciences and humanities, but also across practitioners and design thinkers who map physical Journey Maps with the purpose of improving the UX in a physical space and those conducting interviews for research purposes.
The Integrated Consent Management for Ethics is another key feature of QualNotes. This tool (available inside each project folder) simplifies the process of obtaining and managing consent from research participants. It allows researchers to collect consent from participants digitally with a finger sign on the screen. This reduces paperwork and it is comparatively safer than carrying documents during the field trip because of encryption and password protections. Only the admin user of a project can download the collected consent forms.
Data privacy is a cornerstone of QualNotes. The secure storage of these consents is a priority. QualNotes ensures that all consents are stored securely with multiple safeguards, protecting the privacy of participants and maintaining the integrity of the research data. This commitment to data privacy and the facilitation of ethical research practices.