What are Focus Groups?
A Focus Group is a carefully planned discussion with a small group (5 to 10 participants). It is used to explore design directions and learn about experiences from your target audience. Focus Groups are specifically not useful for discovering usability problems, but it is a very good way to discuss the experiences with using your product and learn about conflicting needs between user groups. A Focus Group session to learn about user experiences is primarily not focused on buying decisions or featurism, but on the usage of your product in the long term.
How does a Focus Groups work?
Traditionally a Focus Group session is lead by an experienced moderator and consists of a group of people from the target audience. It is an interactive session in which participants are free to talk with other group members. The discussion is guided by pre-defined questions and small (design) activities and typically takes 1-2 hours. A focus group activity can vary from a product exploration to a creative brainstorm or even a hands-on co-design session. To maximize the results of a Focus Group session, the setup is developed in close collaboration with the client.
Reasons to conduct a Focus Group session
- To learn about the user’s memories, ideas and experiences
- To explore user’s perceptions or implementations of e.g. concepts, prototypes, ideas
- To explore suggestions for improvement of current products by expert users
- To gain understanding about your target market
- To supplement quantitative data about user’s behaviour (from e.g. a Usability test or Web Analytics)
Deliverables
Our Focus Group reports include
- Description of the findings of each session
- Summary with main results
- Highlight video of focus group session quotes (optional)
The report is usually presented during a workshop with the client.
Contact us
For more information please get in touch.