A project is its own database where you can dive deep into a specific topic or area of interest and transform your data into insights. In this lesson, you will learn how to prepare for and create your first project, what you can use projects for as well as setting up automation for transcribing, summarizing, and analyzing data in your first project.

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What is a project used for?

Projects are a space for you to thoroughly analyze data-rich sources like customer interviews, usability tests, sales calls, or surveys to draw very detailed insights. Projects can also house existing research, so it’s always on hand and able to be referenced by your team.
  • To create a project, navigate to + New and select Project.
  • From there, you can start from one of our templates or from a blank project. We recommend that you start from our Customer interviews template as it contains a simple starting set of tags that you can work with.

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Define your project goals and objectives

First, articulate the core objective of your research. What business decision will this research help inform? What change do you hope to drive? Work with your stakeholders to define this.
  • Weak Goal: “We want to talk to users about the new dashboard.”
  • Strong Goal: “We need to understand if the new dashboard design helps users complete their key tasks more efficiently, to inform our Q4 launch decision.
Now that you know your “why,” it’s time to plan the “how” and “who.” This is also where you’ll design the foundational structure of your Dovetail project before any data comes in. 1. Choose Your Methodology and Participants Based on your research questions, decide on the best approach.
  • Methodology: Will this be a series of 1:1 interviews? A moderated usability test? A diary study?
  • Participants: Who do you need to learn from? Define your participant criteria clearly (e.g., “Active users on the Pro plan who have signed up in the last 6 months”).

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Use AI to automate analysis workflows

We know that analyzing qualitative data can be time-consuming. Projects help automate the repetitive parts of analysis and will do the work in transcribing any video or audio files upon import, generating summaries of your data, and surface notable quotes for you to review. When creating a new project, Dovetail’s AI automation is turned on by default. You can decide how much AI you want working with your data by navigating to ••• in the top right corner of your project. Click on this to reveal a dropdown menu with several features and options.