Focus Group

[lindsayboylan]

What

Moderated discussion with a group of 6-9 relevant customers.

Why

The benefit of focus groups instead of user interviews is that you have a group of people (if recruited correctly) that will feed off each other in a positive way. Users will be more likely to open up about their emotions, their wants, etc... by having a more free form discussion with people who feel like their peers.

When

Doing a focus group is only really recommended when you need initial product insights. For example, when you’re trying to learn a little more about your user group or how they might interact with your product etc… Think about them as a replacement for user interviews.

You should never do a focus group when you’re looking at a product. Many people will open up less when they are evaluating a tangible product for fear of being judged.

How

Recruit:

General recruitment logistics

Recruit relevant users who will feel like peers. This is probably the hardest piece of focus groups. For focus groups there is a tricky balance in finding people who represent all of your customers but have personality types that might work well together. Go through the normal recruitment steps (e.g. potentially sending them a screening survey), but keep this in mind as you’re picking people for the group.

Writing out talking points and non-leading questions:

Just like a user interview you want to be able to ask good user research questions and based off of how the user responds, ask follow up ones to make sure you understand completely where they are coming from.

Moderating:

Moderation of a focus group is much like moderation of a brainstorm and/or a user interview. Like each of these, it is important to show that you’re listening, not lead the group or state leading questions, guide them to talk about the relevant topics with overarching questions (this includes keeping them on topic) and ask clarifying questions.

Getting Significant Data:

Because recruiting for these is hard and it can be hard to control a large group of people, you should run at least 2 tests to make sure the data you get is significant.

Analysis and Report Out:

A report out again might be very similar to a user interview report. Evaluation of the mood of the group, interesting points that arose, and quotes to back up what you heard.

Pro Tips

There are many things you need to be careful of when doing a focus group:

• Making sure, as moderator, you hear from everyone. If one person is dominating conversation, calling on other people so that you can hear differing opinions.
• One thing you always need to be careful of when you’re only talking to users instead of watching them is that what people say can actually be different than what is real. People aren’t lying, it’s just their perception of an event. Good user research questions can sometimes help here.

Helpful Reads

• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JXOJTLE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#customerReviews
• Also, anything by Neilson: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/focus-groups/