When Dr. Lautman, MBA adjuntc professor at Wharton, asks his students to come up with business concepts, he knows an important part of the process is customer feedback. But before discovering video ethnography, this was a challenge. How would his students gain access to real-world customers within an academic setting, and how would they get responses in time?

mindswarms mobile video ethnography has changed all of this. Dr. Lautman reached out to mindswarms, and asked them to help his students develop mobile video surveys. This alone was educational, with students learning the importance of asking the right questions in the right way, and also best practices for gleaning insights from the videos. Plus, the students were easily able to get responses within the semester.

The feedback students got from real-world consumers was formative: Beyond the respondents’ words, the students were able to see facial reactions and subtle nonverbal cues, providing valuable insight into consumer emotions and motivations. Wharton believes this guided his students forward, putting together the needs they’d identified with what consumers say. “This is where the great insights come from,” he said.

Perhaps the best result of all: Several student projects went on to get real-world VC funding. It doesn’t get more successful than that. Hear Dr. Lautman’s insights here.