Focus Groups
What is a focus group?
A focus group is a moderated discussion among eight to 12 users or potential users of your site. A typical focus group lasts about two hours and covers a range of topics that you decide on beforehand.
Focus groups are a traditional market research technique, so marketing departments are often more familiar with focus groups than with usability testing or contextual interviews. However, the techniques produce different kinds of information. In a typical focus group, participants talk; you hear them tell you about their work. In a typical usability test or contextual interview, users act; you watch (and listen to) them doing their work.
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What can you learn from a focus group?
- users' attitudes, beliefs, desires
- users' reactions to ideas or to prototypes
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What do you not learn from a typical focus group?
- how users really work with Web sites
- what problems users really have with sites
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How do you conduct a focus group?
- Select participants to represent the types of users you want to come to the Web site. (This is true of all the data-gathering techniques.)
- Decide what you want to learn. (This is also true for other data-gathering techniques.)
- Write a "script" for the moderator to follow. (In usability testing, you write scenarios - tasks - for users to perform. In contextual interviewing, you let the context and the user's work shape the dialogue.)
- Hire a skilled moderator to facilitate the discussion so that everyone participates and the group stays on track. (In the other techniques, you need skilled observers and listeners.)
- Allow the moderator flexibility in using the script. The script usually gives the moderator questions to ask and topics to cover. The moderator may change the order of questions and topics to keep the discussion flowing smoothly. The moderator has to be a good judge of time to decide when to encourage more discussion on a topic and when to move on.
- Tape the sessions and have one or more people take good notes. (This is also true of other data gathering techniques. Good notes are critical to making sense of what you see and hear in all these techniques.)
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