The best data collection tools at a glance Data collection isn't an exciting, fast-moving category, so if you've read this article in the past, you'll notice that our picks are relatively consistent-last year, one app fell off the list and another was added this year, another app fell off the list and one new app was added.Īnd now, onto the best software for data collection. I also relied on the work of the other writers and researchers who have updated this list over the previous few years to help evaluate the quality of the apps we tested. I've been updating this list for two years, so I've now tested all the apps at least twice, some of them more. For others, I installed an app on my phone and wandered around my neighborhood. For some that didn't make the list, the signup process was enough to exclude them. Testing took as long as it took for me to really get a feel and understand the basics of each app. For some apps, this meant building a data collection survey to measure my own coffee intake-and the quality of it for others, it meant building a coffee shop tracking app, or at least my take on one. Where there were tutorials or sample data, I followed along or explored them. I signed up for whatever trial account was available and tried to use it in the way the app encouraged me. Since data collection is such a broad problem to solve-and the apps that tackle it do so in similarly broad ways-there wasn't really a universal testing protocol for these apps. in Business and Management, so I'm familiar with many of the problems surrounding collecting and collating good data. In addition to my decade of experience as a tech writer and app reviewer, I also have a BSc. While some of the apps allow you to work with your data directly, that wasn't the main thing I was looking for here. One thing to note is that these are data collection apps, not data analysis apps. Not only are all these tools nice to use, but they also allow you to make data collection tools that are nice to use. It's infuriating having to battle against badly designed, horrendously laid out, and just awful user interfaces. Almost all of us have used tools that feel like they were designed by a committee that had half-watched a short YouTube video on the problem they had to solve. The better your data collection app integrates with the rest of the software you use, the easier it is for you to understand what's happening on the ground. Gathering data is all well and good, but you also need to be able to do something with it. Integration with third-party apps, APIs, and other external tools. ![]() If that's a concern for your organization, consider one of the pricier enterprise-focused options. With that said, while lower-priced apps tend to offer much the same feature set, I suspect that the quality of support available won't be the same. Where two apps offered similar feature sets, I favored the ones with the lowest-or at least most transparent-pricing. Some of these apps can get expensive quickly, especially for large teams. For each app, I needed some special reason that it was worth including. If you just need people to fill in a basic form, any of these picks will do. Some apps handle location data really well, whereas others have incredibly intuitive form builders. ![]() ![]() Here's what we were looking for when testing these apps for data collection:Ī unique or standout feature that the app did better than its competitors. These are all a given, and to be honest, even the worst tools I tested mostly met these criteria-they were just more awkward and otherwise unpleasant to use. What separates a great data collection tool from the merely adequate, then, are all the extras. They have to work offline, so you aren't worried about a cellular or Wi-Fi connection in remote locations.Īnd they need to make it so you can use the data and see what's happening. They need to make it easy for your staff or research team to accurately track the information they need. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.įield data collection tools have to do a few things: We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software.
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