Digital experience research studies how people use websites, apps and online services in their real lives, not only in a lab. It covers the first visit, the daily habit, the moment something goes wrong and the reasons people come back or leave. On Zolensa, participants record their screen while they talk it through, keep a short diary of their use over days, and rate each step of a journey, all on the devices they already own.
When to use digital experience research
- Onboarding and first use: sign-up, first steps and the first week of an app or service.
- Habits over time: how and when people use a banking, shopping, streaming or health app in a normal week.
- Cross-device journeys: starting on a phone and finishing on a computer, or the other way round.
- Comparing with competitors: the same task on your service and on a rival's.
- Customer support moments: what people do when they are stuck, and where they look for help.
How a study runs on Zolensa
- Add screen recording tasks. A screen recording question asks people to record their screen and say what they think. On a computer it records in the browser, with the microphone. On a phone, participants use the phone's own screen recorder and upload the video.
- Add a diary of use. A repeatable task, such as "every time you open the app this week", collects short entries with a rating and a note.
- Map the journey. A journey map lets people rate each step, with five faces from very bad to very good.
- Talk live when needed. Plan a one to one video interview in the browser to go deeper with a few participants. They can share their screen from a computer while you talk, and observers watch unseen.
- Search what people saw. The text on each screen recording is read on Zolensa's own server, and AI writes one sentence on what happens. Search across all recordings by word or by meaning.
- Report. Themes with clips, the average journey and its pain point, and highlight reels of the key moments.
Zolensa features that help
- Screen recording with voice. Up to 10 minutes per recording, with a timer that stops at the limit you set.
- On-screen text without AI costs. By default, Zolensa reads the text in screen recordings and photos itself. AI writes only a short description from a few frames.
- Transcripts with times. Click a line of the transcript to jump to that moment in the recording.
- Participant groups. Give new users and long-time users different tasks.
- Live interviews. Interviews and group discussions in the browser, recorded and transcribed.
- Highlights. Mark the moment someone gets lost, add a note and tags, and find all such moments in one place.
Plan for these
- Say what to share. Ask people to share one window or one app, and to close private tabs and messages first.
- Give a real task. "Find a flight for two to Lisbon next month" works better than "explore the site".
- Ask them to think aloud. A short practice task at the start helps people get used to talking while they click.
- Keep recordings short. Two to five minutes per task is easier to review than one long session.
