If someone has contacted you to participate in a Fabric video survey, it means that they value your opinion and would like to ask you some questions about a topic they are researching!
A Fabric video survey is a set of questions (usually 10 questions per study) about a topic that you likely have some level of experience with. The video survey is administered through the Fabric platform, which will walk you through each question one by one. Each question will prompt a video response from you (30-60 seconds long), which you will record on the platform. The video survey can be accessed on the platform on any camera and microphone enabled mobile device or laptop/desktop computer.
Once the researcher has set their questions up in the Fabric platform, they will send you an email invitation that has a link to access the study and submit your video responses through the platform. The email invitation will come from “no-reply@fabric.is.” If the researcher has sent email invitations out, make sure to check your spam folder as well.
Fabric video surveys usually have a deadline and it is important to participate and submit your video responses as soon as you’ve received the email invitation, before the deadline. Most Fabric studies have limited seats available, and researchers may invite more people than they need, so we recommend submitting your video responses and completing your Fabric study ASAP once you’ve received the email invitation to ensure that you can participate before the study fills up and you can receive payment for your video responses.
If you successfully participate in a Fabric video survey and submit all of your video responses before the study fills up or the deadline has passed, you will receive payment for your participation via PayPal.
If you are sure that the researcher has sent email invitations out but you cannot find yours in your spam folder, contact the researcher to let them know and make sure they have the correct email address. They may ask you for an alternate email address and try to send you a new invitation.
A Fabric video survey is administered through the Fabric platform, which will walk you through each question one by one. Each question will prompt a video response from you (30-60 seconds long), which you will record on the platform.
The video survey can be accessed on the platform on any camera and microphone enabled mobile device or laptop/desktop computer.
If you would like to complete your Fabric video survey on a mobile device, download the mobile app from your app store and then return to the email invitation to access the link to the study. The link will open up your mobile app and take you directly into the survey where you can start submitting video responses to the survey.
If you would like to complete your Fabric video survey on a camera and microphone-enabled laptop or desktop computer, you can do so within a web browser (we recommend Google Chrome). Follow the link in your email invitation on your web browser to start submitting video responses to the survey.
Fabric video surveys usually have a deadline and it is important to participate and submit your video responses as soon as you’ve received the email invitation, before the deadline. Most Fabric studies have limited seats available, and researchers may invite more people than they need, so we recommend submitting your video responses and completing your Fabric study ASAP once you’ve received the email invitation to ensure that you can participate before the study fills up and you can receive payment for your video responses.
If you successfully participate in a Fabric video survey and submit all of your video responses before the study fills up or the deadline has passed, you will receive payment for your participation via PayPal.
If you would like to complete your Fabric video survey on a mobile device, download the mobile app from your app store and then return to the email invitation to access the link to the study. The link will open up your mobile app and take you directly into the survey where you can start submitting video responses to the survey.
Alternatively, you can complete your Fabric video survey on a camera and microphone-enabled laptop or desktop computer, within a web browser (we recommend Google Chrome). Follow the link in your email invitation on your web browser to start submitting video responses to the survey.
At Fabric, we value authentic video responses from everyday people, so it’s okay if you aren’t a professional videographer! However, minimum requirements for acceptable video include:
If the researcher feels that any of the criteria above have not been met, Fabric may reach out to you and ask you to re-record your video(s) before you can receive payment for your participation.
Right after you record a video response, you will have the opportunity to play it back and review your video before submitting it. If you want to re-record your video, you can do so as many times as you need before submitting the video and moving on to the next question. For more tips on how to record good video responses, click here.
As you respond to each question in the survey, you will be able to see how many questions are left (i.e. if you are on question 2 in a 10-question study, you will see “2/10” to note your progress).
Once you submit your last video, there will be no more questions/prompts.
If you haven’t answered all of the questions in your Fabric video survey yet, you can still close the app or web browser and revisit the survey through the email invitation link. The link will take you to the question where you left off.
If you successfully participate in a Fabric video survey and submit all of your video responses before the study fills up or the deadline has passed, you will receive payment for your participation via PayPal.
Payments are processed through PayPal 24 hours after you complete the study by submitting all of your video responses before the study fills up or the deadline has passed.
If you don’t have a PayPal account, you will still receive an email notification from PayPal regarding your payment and how to access the money.
Our mission at Fabric is to make it easy for people, researchers, and businesses to experience the lives of others from around the world through video. Through Fabric’s DIY option, you (the researcher) can set up your own studies, invite your own audience of participants, and ask those participants questions, getting video answers quickly.
Read more about Fabric use cases, inspiration, and applications in our Resource Hub.
When you set up, launch, and field a Fabric study, the study includes:
As a researcher, you can start building studies through the Fabric study builder once you’ve created a researcher account. Click here to sign up or log in as a Fabric researcher.
Within your Fabric researcher account, you will have access to a dashboard where you can create and manage your studies from study design (# of participants, survey question input, email invitations, etc.), managing and viewing responses, analyzing responses, to account and billing.
Incentive amounts greater than $0 are included in the total study payment billable to you (the researcher), but Fabric will distribute incentive payments greater than $0 to participants through PayPal as they submit their video responses to the study (once the study has been paid for and launched). If a participant completes the survey and doesn’t have a PayPal account associated with the email address you’ve invited into the Fabric video survey, the participant will still receive an email notification from PayPal regarding their payment and how to access the money.
Throughout your experience with Fabric, you’ll see the following names for different roles in a Fabric study:
Studies are created and conducted in English only for the time being, primarily because our app onboarding and instructions are in English only.
We have run Spanish language studies in the US, and foreign language studies in Europe, Asia, Latin American and Africa. For help with non English speaking studies and/or foreign language studies, contact us at sales@fabric.is
Fabric DIY is perfect for researchers who want to be hands on and have control over their research process.
If you are curious about additional research support options with recruitment, study design, analysis, etc. please contact us at sales@fabric.is.
Additionally, the Fabric Resource Hub has content around research design and analysis recommendations, as well as inspiration for Fabric applications and use cases.
Title: The title is the name of your study that will also be visible to your participants. The one thing to keep in mind when titling your study is how much of a hint you want the study name to have – or not – for participants.
For example, if it’s a brand blind study, a generic name should be used (e.g. Car Study). If, however, you want to be more overt about the study topic and/or the company behind it, make the study title more obvious (e.g. Toyota Corolla Owners Study).
Internal title: An internal title is optional and will only be visible to you and your collaborators. Participants will not see this internal title.
Sample sizes depend on a lot of variables, and there are a few ways to look at it.
Our system will only accept completions from the quota you assign – so if you specify your quota as 30 participants, but invite more than 30 participants, our system will stop collecting responses once your study has reached 30 participant completions, unless the quota is amended.
The default for studies is that they are opened for respondents once payment has been processed, and the study will be closed once quota – or the end date – has been reached. Otherwise, you can specify custom start and end dates for studies within the study builder:
Start Date: Set this date for when you’d like to the study to be open and accessible to your invited participants. Note that your payment must also be processed in order to collect video responses from your invited participants.
End Date: Set this date for when you’d like the study to close and stop collecting responses. Note that your study will automatically close on this end date, or once your quota has been reached (whichever comes first).
You can also manually open and close your study later if needed, outside of your specified date range.
When we manage studies for clients, we typically allow up to 7 days to complete US studies, and 14 days for international studies. However, quotas are often filled in a matter of days – sometimes even within hours.
As for incentives, we believe consumers should be compensated well for their time and effort. In our experience, when you are generous with them (regarding compensation), they are generous and responsive in return.
As a result, we typically pay $5/question incentive compensation in our full service studies, but there are a few reasons you may consider offering a higher incentive rate:
There is a limit of ten study questions. Each question will prompt the participant to provide a 60 second self-recorded video response. Therefore, if you set up 10 study questions, you will receive ten, 60 second self recorded video responses per participant once they complete the task.
Study questions have a limit of 400 characters.
Here are some links to great resources for asking effective study questions:
You may bold, italicize and/or underline text in questions. Study questions have a limit of 400 characters.
You may also include links to other sites or cloud destinations (Box, DropBox, Google Drive etc) in order to expose consumers to additional materials.
If you want to add stimulus to a study question, input your question text into the study builder. Participants should be prompted to open the link in the question wording (e.g. “Click on the following link”). Highlight the word(s) you want consumers click on, and add a hyperlinked URL destination.
For example, if you want to present stimulus within a study question, you can write: “Click here to review materials.After reviewing the materials, describe your initial reactions.What did you like and / or dislike about the materials ?” Make sure to highlight the words “Click here to review materials, ” click the hyperlink option, and set your hyperlink to whatever material you’d like participants to review for that study question.
When respondents click on embedded links, a pop up within our mobile app (or a new browser window) will open. After respondents view the stimulus, they will close the pop up or window and record their video response to the study question.
If you’d like to continue asking multiple study questions about a single stimulus hyperlink, we recommend providing the hyperlink again in subsequent questions so that participants can access and review the stimuli for each relevant question. For example, “If you disliked anything in the materials you saw in the previous question, how would you change them? What aspects, language, imagery, etc. would you change specifically? If you need to review the materials again, click here”
You will have the opportunity to preview (including editing and/or deleting) study questions before officially launching your study.
Study questions can also be revised once a study is in progress – however, if you want to change your study questions after you’ve collected any video responses on that study, you will need to keep a separate record of the previous study question version in your own files. Previous versions of study questions are not kept within our platform after you make changes.
If you proceed with any changes to study questions after video responses have been collected, we recommend tagging those participants who have already completed their studies with the appropriate question version that corresponds to your question version labels in your files, so you know which respondent has answered which question set (i.e. tag participant one with a “Question set v1” label, “Question set v2,” etc.).
Our general rule of thumb is 10x the desired quota to begin with, to account for realistic response rates (very rarely will you receive a 100% response/participation rate). If you want 25 respondents to complete, invite 250 to begin with.
You may find that response rates vary depending on various factors:
The study will close once the quota is achieved, so you have that safeguard.
In terms of inviting respondents, they can be added one at a time separated by a comma, or added by uploading a CSV file.
Formatting for the CSV file should include a full email address.
The upper limit for number of invitee email addresses is 1,000.
You can customize the copy that will be emailed to your invited participants.
Sender: Note that the sender on these email invitations will be “no-reply@fabric.is” therefore, you may want to pre-emptively communicate to your participants that they should expect an email invitation from “no-reply@fabric.is,” and to check their spam folder if they can’t find it (once you’ve launched the study and invites have been sent out).
Subject: You can customize the subject line for the invitation email. We recommend utilizing this customization to present a subject line that will stick out to your participants in their email inboxes. For example “[INVITATION FROM SARAH C] $50 mindswarms Video Survey” may be easier for participants to find and notice than a subject like “video survey.”
Message: The invitation email message is an opportunity for added communication between your recruiting process and the platform. Outside of your study questions, there will be minimal detail/instruction within the platform once your participant enters the study from the link provided in the email invitation. Therefore, you may want to add any detail around special tasks required (i.e. “make sure you are at home when you access the study,” or “we will be asking you questions about your car,” or “please complete the study at dinnertime tonight,” etc.) in the customized email invitation.
All of your participants will receive this customized email invitation once you launch the study. The email will also populate with the link to the study itself.
As you walk through the study builder in your initial study set up, you will have an opportunity to review your study definitions (Study title, Internal title, Study dates, Participants count, Incentive), content (Questions), and participant information (# of participants to invite, customized email content) on a single page overview. You can edit these any of these fields before you launch the study.
Once you have agreed to the Terms & Conditions, processed payment, and launched your study, your study will be active and participants will be invited via email with the customized email copy you set within the study builder. If you need to make any changes to your study settings after launching the project, you can do so by navigating to the dashboard, finding your study card, and then clicking the three dots on the study card to “edit.”
For studies that you have started building, but haven’t launched yet, you can exit Fabric and return later for further edits. The study builder will auto save your progress every 10 seconds. When you return to Fabric to continue building your study, your study will appear on your dashboard as a card labeled as “draft” status. You can continue editing your draft study by clicking the three dots on the study card and going to “edit.” Clicking on the card itself will take you to the response matrix (which will remain empty until you launch your study and participants submit their video responses).
The estimate for the study cost is derived from how many participants you are inviting and the incentive you plan to pay them.
A study includes:
Once you have built your study through the study builder, agreed to the terms & conditions, processed payment, and launched your study, your participants will be invited via email with the customized email copy you set within the study builder and your study will be set to “active.” This means that your invited participants can submit their video responses through the platform by accessing the link within their email invitations, as long as your quota of completes has not been met or the end date you set for the study has not expired.
When you return to Fabric to access your active study, your study will appear on your dashboard as a card labeled as “active” status. You can navigate to the study preview and settings by clicking the three dots on the study card and going to “edit.” Clicking on the card itself will take you to the response matrix (which will house any video responses that your invited participants have submitted).
Once you have built your study through the study builder, agreed to the terms & conditions, processed payment, and launched your study, your participants will be invited via email with the customized email copy you set within the study builder and your study will be set to “active.” This means that your invited participants can submit their video responses through the platform by accessing the link within their email invitations.
When you return to Fabric to access your active study, your study will appear on your dashboard as a card labeled as “active” status. You can navigate to the study preview and settings by clicking the three dots on the study card and navigating to “edit.” Clicking on the card itself will take you to the response matrix (which will house any video responses that your invited participants have submitted).
When you access your response matrix, you will see video responses organized and presented in a matrix/table format, with your study questions across the top and respondents down the side.
Participants’ video responses are presented in rows, and each participant row is labeled in the leftmost column of the matrix with that participant’s email address, star rating (based on how you rate them if you decide to utilize this feature), an “Add Name” field for custom name or label (in case the email address doesn’t make it obvious that, say, dogtownskater98 is actually John Smith), and the status of whether the invited participant has opened the link or completed the study (e.g. submitted a video response for each study question).
Study questions are presented in columns, and each question column is labeled in the topmost row of the matrix with the most recent question text you’ve set for the study. Any hyperlinks embedded within study questions are also accessible on the matrix.
When you click on a single video within the matrix, a player for that particular video will pop up with additional options (including tagging, rating, commenting, filtering, and sorting) for interacting with that video in particular.
Preview our response matrix and get to know the platform here, via a sample study.
Because we have no control over the quality of external email addresses, Fabric is not responsible for drop off / unresponsive invited participants. Based on our experience managing our own studies, we have some recommendations for proactively accounting for response rates.
When you are setting up your study and preparing your email invites, our general rule of thumb is to invite 10x the desired quota to begin with, to account for realistic response rates (very rarely will you receive a 100% response/participation rate). If you want 25 respondents to complete, invite 250 to begin with.
You may find that response rates vary depending on various factors:
The study will close once quota is achieved, so you have that safeguard.
The upper limit for number of invitee email addresses is 1,000.
If you receive video responses that you want to omit from the matrix, you can do so by using the “hide” feature. Note that even if you hide a response, you will need to pay for this participant’s completion of the study and their distributed incentive.
If you receive video responses from a participant that are not acceptable and you want them to re-record, you have the opportunity to submit a support ticket within the response matrix, requesting Fabric to notify a participant if their video response(s) are not acceptable.
You have an opportunity to submit a support ticket within the response matrix, requesting Fabric to notify a participant if their video response(s) are not acceptable and provide the participant with a link to re-record their video response(s). These support requests will be reviewed by the Fabric team and processed as follows.
Note that participants will receive their incentive payment 24 hours after they submit their videos. Video responses should be checked before the 24 hour time period has elapsed, so that any support ticket and subsequent action can be communicated to the participant and/or researcher before the participant receives their incentive payment. If the 24 hour time period has already passed, the participant will have received their incentive and is unlikely to re-record videos at that point. Issuing a support ticket before 24 hours will freeze respondents’ payment until their issue is resolved (e.g., you asked them to show their pantry on camera and they did not).
Valid reasons for requesting a participant to re-record through a support ticket include:
You may submit a support ticket request in the context of a singular video response or all of the participant’s video responses.
If you submit a support ticket request for a participant, provide some detail around your reasoning and it will be reviewed against the participant’s video(s). The Fabric team will either submit the notification to the participant and prompt the participant for a re-record, or provide a different recommendation to the researcher if the support ticket reasoning is determined invalid.
If a participant submitted video(s) that have poor audio, poor video, or ara incomplete, you may prompt the participant to re-record their video(s) through the support ticket mechanism.
We recommend being mindful of the participants’ efforts when it comes to requesting re-records. Please see our suggestions on writing effective study questions to set your study up for success and avoid needing re-records.
You can rotate individual videos by clicking on the video, and within the box for that particular video pops up, there is an option to “Rotate” above the video player. Clicking on “Rotate” will provide a dropdown menu with options to rotate 0°, 90°, 180°, or 270°.
You can share individual videos with collaborators. When you click on the video, within the box for that particular video, there is an option to “Share” above the video player. This will copy a link to your clipboard that you can share with collaborators outside of the platform (they do not have to log into a Fabric account in order to access this link and view the video you’ve shared).
You can also share a full response matrix with collaborators by navigating to the matrix view, then clicking the three dots in the right hand corner of the matrix, which will provide a dropdown menu with the option to “Share.” You can enter your collaborators’ email addresses and a message, which will send them an email notification with access to view the response matrix.
Sharing videos and response matrices will not give collaborators access to edit any of your study settings, but they can view your study assets and comment within the platform.
Once you’ve collected video responses to your Fabric study, there are tools within the Fabric platform (in the response matrix) that can assist your analysis process such as tagging, rating, commenting, filtering, and sorting.
The layout of the response matrix itself is designed to set you, the researcher, up for the most success when it comes to reviewing, synthesizing, and analyzing the content from your collected video responses. The grid format organizes video content into easy-to-digest 1-minute video clips based on participant and study question, making it easy to locate the topic and/or participant whose video response you’d like to interact with.
Additionally, Google speech transcripts provide a searchable text format of the collected video content.
You may download transcripts and individual videos off of the Fabric response matrix if you’d like to store them within your own files, or use the content in video editing, presentations, etc.
When you navigate to your study’s response matrix, the default view shows the video responses in the matrix format. At the top right hand side of the response matrix is an option where you can click to toggle between “Show Transcripts” and back to the default, “Show Videos.”
“Show Transcripts” toggles to Google Speech transcripts in the response matrix view instead of the video responses.
Transcripts are generated by Google Speech (editable because machines aren’t perfect at matching video responses yet).
When you click on an individual video response, within the box for that particular video, there is an option to “Add Tag” underneath the video player. These tags work like hashtags, where you can label the video response with shorthand notes that will be helpful to you in organizing and finding those specific video responses based on topic, or any category you decide. Some examples:
Tags are meant to be customized for your use as a researcher, to help you organize your video responses and content.
Star ratings are optional but can help you label participants based on their overall response quality. That way, you can rate participants and have a birds eye view on:
Star ratings are based on your criteria and participants will not have visibility to the way you’ve rated them on the response matrix. Collaborators will have visibility to star ratings on the response matrix.
When you click on an individual video response, within the box for that particular video, there is an option add comments on that individual video response. This can be helpful to bookmark some thoughts you have about that video response that you can revisit later. Comments can be used for more long-hand thoughts than tags.
Participants will not have visibility to the comments you’ve added to their videos. Collaborators will have visibility to comments on the response matrix.
At the top right hand side of the response matrix is an option where you can click to filter responses based on the options provided in the dropdown menu:
At the top right hand side of the response matrix is an option where you can click to sort responses based on the options provided in the dropdown menu:
If you are curious about additional analysis support options, please contact us at sales@fabric.is.
Additionally, the Fabric Resource Hub has content around research design and analysis recommendations, as well as inspiration for Fabric applications and use cases.
Contact us for help: email finance@fabric.is.
Contact us for help: sales@fabric.is.
If you have drafted a study but you haven’t submitted payment yet, you will not be billed. If you have already paid for and launched your study, you may cancel your study at $250 minimum fee until 7 days after payment.
Discover the speed and power of Fabric’s AI and easy to use platform below, featuring a real study conducted by 3 PhDs at MSFT in 2021!