A rather interesting qualitative analysis tool that isn't ridiculously priced and claims to be easy to use. Has anybody had a play/does anybody use it regularly?

http://www.quirkos.com

Cheers,
Bill

MadaboutDana wrote:

A rather interesting qualitative analysis tool that isn't ridiculously
priced and claims to be easy to use. Has anybody had a play/does anybody
use it regularly?
http://www.quirkos.com

Interesting find, thanks for that. Always good to see new entrants in this space, as the big boys can indeed be overpriced and very restrictive with their licensing. It's also a very interesting idea to make this kind of qualitative coding accessible to non-researchers.

I've only just watched the videos. Overall it looks good, but I'm wondering how well it would cope with some larger scale projects, where there might be a hundred or more deeply nested codes and sub-codes. For those kind of situations a hierarchical tree organisation may still be more useful than these bubbles. Perhaps they add that feature one day (unless it's already there).

Hi, I'm Daniel, one of the designers of Quirkos - do let us know what you think, we're really new so feedback is always welcome!

I've only just watched the videos. Overall it looks good, but I'm
wondering how well it would cope with some larger scale projects, where
there might be a hundred or more deeply nested codes and sub-codes. For
those kind of situations a hierarchical tree organisation may still be
more useful than these bubbles. Perhaps they add that feature one day
(unless it's already there).

There is also a traditional hierarchy list view for the codes, so you aren't forced to use the bubbles - much more useful if as you say you have hundreds of codes. It's called the 'luggage label' view: you can see how to access it in the bit guide video below:

http://youtu.be/Hk7YWoVud-Y?t=23s

Dr Dan wrote:

There is also a traditional hierarchy list view for the codes, so you
aren't forced to use the bubbles - much more useful if as you say you
have hundreds of codes. It's called the 'luggage label' view: you can
see how to access it in the bit guide video below:
http://youtu.be/Hk7YWoVud-Y?t=23s

Hi Daniel,

welcome to the forum and many thanks for your prompt reply and for the link! Good to see there is also a hierarchical list view. And congrats to what looks like a very innovative software.

Nevertheless, if you don't mind me saying so, those "luggage labels" seem to be taking up a fair bit of screen real estate (when compared to let's say what they'd look in Nvivo, e.g. http://drandus.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/nvivo_codes.png ). Also, at first sight I missed that the list was indented, as the indentation is rather slight.

It looks like the design favours touch screens? Personally I prefer to use a desktop PC with keyboard and mouse when working with large data sets with hundred plus codes, and in those situations I find that the more of a list is visible on the screen, the better.

Anyway, these are just my first impressions, and only from looking at the videos. I will take it on a test ride when I have a bit more time.

Best wishes with the venture!

Nevertheless, if you don't mind me saying so, those "luggage labels"
seem to be taking up a fair bit of screen real estate (when compared to
let's say what they'd look in Nvivo, e.g.
http://drandus.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/nvivo_codes.png ). Also, at
first sight I missed that the list was indented, as the indentation is
rather slight.

Thanks, that's some really useful feedback - I'll look into making that more obvious, and a bit tighter. However, Quirkos will display multiple columns in that view, side-by-side, so you should be able to see far more codes at once than you would on Nvivo...

It looks like the design favours touch screens? Personally I prefer to
use a desktop PC with keyboard and mouse when working with large data
sets with hundred plus codes, and in those situations I find that the
more of a list is visible on the screen, the better.

Yes, the design (and files) are the same for tablets and desktop computers, so it's always a familiar interface - but it's very much proper desktop software too - there are keyboard short-cuts for coding for example, and it stretches really well across two screens for true power users!

Thanks so much for you feedback, keep it coming, I'm always looking for improvements we can make.

Daniel

Hm, that side-by-side thing sounds damn cool. I'm going to have to play. It's always nice to hear directly from a responsive developer, too!

A silly question (I'm so busy currently, I haven't had time to view the videos, let alone download the trial), so forgive me if the answer's obvious: can tagged segments of text overlap? Even if some of the tags are sub-tags of other tags (used to tag segments of text overlapping with that particular segment of text)?

I suspect/expect a positive answer to that, but would love to know.

Cheers,
Bill

MadaboutDana wrote:

can tagged segments of text overlap? Even if some of the tags
are sub-tags of other tags (used to tag segments of text overlapping
with that particular segment of text)?

Yup, that seems to work very well, nicely colour-coded (you can see it here in less than a min.):

http://youtu.be/I60-lrpQvig?t=1m26s

Dang, that's seriously cool. Oh dear. Temptation is lurking in the underbrush...

Hm. Temptation has been fairly easily repelled, since the commercial price of GBP 400, while not ridiculous (especially not by the standards of qualitative analysis software) is nevertheless not exactly an inducement to an impulse buy. But I've been watching the videos and have now downloaded the trial. If this works as well as the videos suggest, it's a seriously impressive tool with a very broad range of potential applications.

In particular, I think the way the categorisation and search engine can be used seamlessly together is very elegant. The way you can create source metadata fields on the fly which are then shared across the entire source repository is an outstanding idea (shades of Idealist). And the reporting looks interesting, too. As you say, Dr Andus, the whole thing has been designed for overlapping categories, subcategories etc., but manages to suggest that it's still very easy to use. The fact that it's programmed for cross-platform use (including mobile) from the get-go suggests the development team are well-grounded in today's realities! Just waiting for the iOS version now, of course...

So. The trial will show whether, after having used all these wonderful features to analyse a bunch of source texts, one can then produce some kind of meaningful, structured, conclusion-enabling output. I have a vast store of documents dealing with my main obsessions, so should be able to generate some meaningful output fairly quickly (when I can find time to do some analysis).

Also nice to find that the developers are based just down the road in Edinburgh! Might have to go and talk to them about my Ultimate Authoring Tool concept...

MadaboutDana wrote:

Hm. Temptation has been fairly easily repelled, since the commercial
price of GBP 400, while not ridiculous (especially not by the standards
of qualitative analysis software) is nevertheless not exactly an
inducement to an impulse buy. But I've been watching the videos and have
now downloaded the trial. If this works as well as the videos suggest,
it's a seriously impressive tool with a very broad range of potential
applications.

Thanks - yes, the licence looks pricey, but our commercial customers expect a high standard of prompt support, by e-mail and especially phone, (which isn't available for other tiers) and this is expensive to provide.

Also nice to find that the developers are based just down the road in
Edinburgh! Might have to go and talk to them about my Ultimate Authoring
Tool concept...

Would love to hear about it! Quirkos is very new, so feedback and suggestions for features you'd like to see are always welcome (daniel@quirkos.com). Do let me know next time you are in town.

We are hoping to have the iOS version ready next year, the Android and Linux versions are only a few months away...

Thanks for that, Dr. Dan. I'd be delighted to pop into Edinburgh and meet up.

Meanwhile, it might be worth launching a version for personal use? Mid-priced, as it were. Just a thought...

Cheers,
Bill