1 Second Everyday

If, like me, you struggle to remember what you did last month, let alone last year, you'll fall in love with my new favourite app: 1 Second Everyday.

I came across it not while reading tech blogs or scrolling through Twitter but watching a film — proof that inspiration really is everywhere! It’s pretty self-explanatory. You film one second of video every day and the app stitches these moments together into one continuous movie. Each clip is labelled with the date it was taken so that, when you look back, you can get a glimpse of what happened on each individual day.

1 Second Everyday is undoubtedly a great app for capturing memories but I’d argue that it could also be a useful tool for qualitative research. Most obviously, you could ask respondents to use it over a period of weeks or months to capture the most significant moments in their lives. A second of video each day won't yield the deepest or most robust insights, but it will give stakeholders a flavour of their customers’ lives.

Arguably, the app’s most valuable use might be as a way of prompting consumers to recall their past experiences. Its founder hopes that just one second will be enough to remind users of their entire day and he certainly has a point. Recording videos is certainly much easier than writing notes and video also has a much more powerful ability to bring back memories, thoughts and feelings than other means. As researchers we could harness this and use 1 Second Everyday as a pre-task. Just ask respondents to record daily activities — for example, the foods they eat or their shopping trips — and the videos could then act as visual cues to stimulate discussions in any subsequent qualitative research.

Emma Muckersie
This article was first published in InBrief magazine, September 2016
Copyright © Association for Qualitative Research, 2016