Towards a Holy Grail of qualitative interviewing...

If you've ever done research that involves interviews... you've likely had a dream about�what I call�the Holy Grail of Qualitative Interviewing: A machine that will easily record the audio of an interview and spit out a time-tagged transcript.

Here's a measly start that answers a lot of the problems that I hear some of my colleagues here at SIMS groaning about... the Nomad Jukebox 3 (40GB):

Not only will this do everything that an iPod can, but with the microphone attachment, it will also record to mp3 or wav format (with gain adjustment for loud environments) and it also has optical line-in recording.

This means that your 1-2 hour interviews will be an easily manageable 25-35 MB�no more clunky tapes or DRM-hobbled MiniDisc�and you can use your favorite software (I like iTunes and the Synergy add-on software) to aid in doing transcription. I've been meaning to try this JAVA tool that Doc Searls recommended a while back... but haven't.

Now we just need some serious NLP... then I can start piecing together the Holy Grail of Qualitative Interviewing!

Update [2004-04-19 17:22:58]: I forgot to mention that the NJB and the Nomad Zen models now talk to Macs. Rejoice!

Posted by joebeone at Abril 19, 2004 04:57 PM | TrackBack