Hallrank: Simplifying and Quantifying Market Research

While churning through startup ideas and moving some down the field, I find myself having countless decision points along the way. Decisions that are very market-dependent. I can often make a call, but some things I would ideally want input from my potential customers or trusted advisors. I wanted a way to poll individuals, making the process painless for them and capture the data in such a way that I could easily distill the answers to my questions. Hallrank is the set of tools I’ve built to help me along the way.

Hallrank has a number of tools that can be used to solve your problems. One common task I encounter is choosing a name or selecting an ideal graphic. I’m not necessarily looking for a choice that wins me over, but rather resonates well with my users. One popular method I use with Hallrank is condorcet voting or instant run-off voting (IRV), which are voting strategies where individuals rank-order their preference and an “optimal” candidate is chosen not just a simple majority rule. There is also a paired comparison strategy offered in Hallrank, where users decide their preference between two options based on some declared criterion. After a series of comparisons detailed quantitative results are able to be generated. Regardless of the outcome, I’m not just interested in consensus and Hallrank offers other benefits beyond consensus building.

Design by committee is terrible. I am usually not just interested in finding the highest ranked or averaged selection. There are many other facets to consider including whose opinion I’m considering. Hallrank allows you to tag your respondents according to specific demographic or user groups for later data analysis. So, Group A prefers item X and hates item Y, while Group B prefers Y. Hallrank also allows you to identify highly contentious items as well as those selections that are safe and boring–no one hates them, but no one particularly loves them.

I’ve found the tool to be extremely helpful and I want to be able to offer it to others and see how they are able to use it in their work. Check it out at: Hallrank