"Qualzy gives us a window into the lives of our participants and has the tools that allow us to analyse and understand those lives."
Hamish Kynoch, Head of Qualitative Research — Discovery Research
Discovery Research spent a year with another platform before returning to Qualzy — and describe the AI analysis capability as "basically transformative." This PDF covers what it looks like to run 50 participants across 7 tasks with AI doing the heavy lifting, how pre-task research integrates with in-person focus groups, and why mosaic view changed how the team moderates.
Compelling reading for any agency that has ever trialled a competitor and wondered if the grass was greener.
Discovery Research is a well-established, full-service research agency with eleven staff. It works across B2C and B2B sectors — finance, telco, retail — delivering qual, quant, and recruitment services for clients including National Savings and Investments, Nectar, and Ofcom.
The qualitative team runs multiple short-term studies simultaneously, often alongside focus groups and in-depth interviews. They needed a platform that could support delivery from setup through to analysis without creating friction — for researchers or participants. And when a year-long contract with another platform ended, they reassessed. They came back to Qualzy.
"Having not used Qualzy for a long time, I could pretty simply set up a project and get going on it without having to speak to anyone."
Hamish Kynoch, Head of Qualitative Research — Discovery Research
Most of Discovery's Qualzy work involves short, focused projects of one to two weeks — often running as pre-tasks ahead of in-person focus groups or IDIs. Participants upload photos and videos from their everyday lives, giving researchers richer context before any live interaction takes place.
Previously, gathering this kind of pre-task input was fragmented — things arrived by email, piecemeal. Qualzy pulls it all into a single environment, and the mosaic moderation view makes working through it genuinely pleasant rather than laborious.
"The mosaic tile style response page really makes it very easy to moderate. It is a nice way of working, as opposed to the more traditional single participant-by-participant stream... it feels visually nicer and easier to moderate — plus there are participant instructions built in for things like video uploads. That really helps."
Hamish Kynoch, Head of Qualitative Research — Discovery Research
"We used to ask for input in pre-tasks and get them to email things. Now it is all captured in one place inside Qualzy."
Hamish Kynoch, Head of Qualitative Research — Discovery Research
"The other really important element in Qualzy is the AI analysis. I think that is basically transformative for these sorts of platforms."
Hamish Kynoch, Head of Qualitative Research — Discovery Research
As asynchronous projects scale up, so does the volume of data. Traditional manual review becomes impractical fast. Qualzy's AI processes every participant submission automatically — generating summaries and structured key points that extract the signal from the noise.
For Hamish and the Discovery team, this capability has materially changed the business case for async research. Larger qualitative datasets are no longer a problem — they're an opportunity.
"If you have 50 people and you have seven tasks for each, it's incredibly hard to analyse all that manually — but we can now."
Hamish Kynoch, Head of Qualitative Research — Discovery Research
"That is, if not the main driver, then one of the top one or two drivers of why platforms like Qualzy are now much more worth the money — because you can get through all that data."
Hamish Kynoch, Head of Qualitative Research — Discovery Research
"Qualzy gives us a window into the lives of our participants and has the tools that allow us to analyse and understand those lives."
Hamish Kynoch, Head of Qualitative Research — Discovery Research