Web Based Database Builder for Research Studies
Over the past several months, Think Say Do has been working with online marketing company e-Media Resources to deliver a visual query builder for Chamberlain Research Consultants in Madison, Wisconsin. It has been very well received with thousands of sign-ups since launch.
To start the project, we wrote the front-end for participants to sign up for research studies, completely integrated into Chamberlain’s branding standards:
The participant sign-up forms are dynamically built from a custom metadata file describing how the form fields should behave. This metadata file also then was leveraged dynamically for the visual query builder to provide incredible depth of searching. If that sounds technical, read on it gets easier to understand…
In the Visual Query Builder, you can add as many filters as you’d like. You can drill through hundreds of fields, each with options tailored to that particular data type. So, for example:
- Give me all people in WI
- Who own a Wii
- And Guitar Hero
- And have children between the ages of 6 and 12
- With a household income over $45,000
- Who own energy efficient appliances
That’s a relatively complex query, spanning in this case three participant databases. The amazing thing is that Chamberlain staff had to write no SQL to get a participant list almost instantly. All they had to do was select a few drop-downs and the SQL was written for them with no technical knowledge required.
Each field type was populated from the metadata file and directly linked against the data. You can even save your queries for future use, tap multiple participant study panels, and cross-search panels, plus download Excel lists of results and full database lists. Amazingly awesome. Amazingly powerful. Amazingly easy to use! Training lasted just 20 minutes to cover the entire process! That’s how easy it is to use.
If you’re interested in having something like this for your research consultancy, let us know. We’d be happy to help! Call us at 317-489-9184 (Indianapolis area) or email us at projects at think say do dot com.
~Collin Schneider
Founder / Systems Designer
Think Say Do, LLC
Business Systems Designed for People.
7 months ago
