Online bulletin board
An online bulletin board is a qualitative research method in which a group of participants answers questions posted by a moderator on a private online board over several days, responding at their own pace and to one another. It is also called an asynchronous online focus group.
How it works
The moderator posts a set of questions or tasks each day, sometimes with images, videos or concepts to react to. Participants log in when convenient, answer, and read and reply to others. The moderator probes individual answers and steers the discussion. A board usually runs over several days.
Research on asynchronous online focus groups finds participants value the flexibility of joining at their own time and place, and that the format opens research to people who could not attend a scheduled group. Answers are often more considered than in a live group. The trade-off is energy and spontaneity, and the moderator needs to keep people engaged across days.
A worked example
A pharmaceutical company runs a 5-day board with 18 caregivers of people with a chronic illness, in 3 time zones. Each day covers one part of the care routine. By day 3, participants start sharing their own tracking methods, and 11 of the 18 describe the same paper chart, which inspires a companion app.
Related
Automate this in Pulse
Where a bulletin board moderator replies hours later, Pulse's moderator follows up on each answer while the participant is still in the conversation.