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Frequently Asked Questions about User Validation:
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What are focus group interviews and when are they useful ?
Focus group interview is a qualitative method which can be used alone or with other qualitative or quantitative methods to bring an improved depth of understanding to the needs and requirements of users and customers (Vaughn et al 1996).
A focus group is an informal assembly of users whose opinions to a selected topic are requested. The goal is to elicit perceptions, feelings, attitudes, and ideas of participants about a selected topic. Focus group interviews can be applied at any time in the development process of electronic information applications in order to perform a market analysis, a user needs and requirements analysis, to communicate with target users about design concepts, ideas, and prototypes, and to investigate users' views when the application is already in use. However, the best use of this technique is in the early phases of the development process.
Usually about 6 to 12 users participate in a focus group meeting for about 1.5 to 2 hours. The interview is run by a moderator who is responsible for maintaining the focus of the group on the issues of interest to the addressees of the focus group results. "From the users' perspective, a focus group session should feel free-flowing and relatively unstructured, but in reality, the moderator has to follow a preplanned script for what issues to bring up. Focus groups often bring out users' spontaneous reactions and ideas through the interaction between the participants and have the major advantage of allowing observation of some group dynamics and organizational issues." (Nielsen 1993, p. 214). The purpose of focus group interviews is not on consensus building - rather, it is on obtaining a range of opinions from a representative set of target users about quality of use issues. Each user's point of view is of interest and it is the moderators task to encourage users to express their different points of view. Focus groups are mainly designed to obtain people's opinions and not to determine the exact strength of their opinions. Notice that focus group interviews do not generate quantitative information and the results can neither be generalized nor projected to a larger population.[ACS1] The results of focus group interviews can be used as a basis for generating hypotheses for further evaluation and user validation using both qualitative and quantitative methods, e.g. the results can assist in the development of questionnaires, surveys, and items for tests by identifying response categories and constructs that evaluators might not have otherwise considered. Focus groups can make questionnaires and other evaluation methods more language sensitive, because vocabulary that is common to the users can be discerned in the focus group interview and then incorporated into the measure.
Focus groups are particularly useful when there is a lack of reliable and valid measures for obtaining information on the selected topics. They have a quick turnaround time in data collection and analysis (a focus group meetings plus a quick and rough analysis can be performed even within a day).
Focus groups are based upon well-developed principles of psychology, sociology, and communication. Users of this technique must be familiar with the application of these principles even if they are not conversant with the theories or empirical studies comprising them. The conduct of focus groups, however, requires experienced persons, because there are many potential abuses of focus groups that can impact the validity of the results.
Origin: Focus groups have their origin in market research where they have been applied to research proposed products, services or advertising approaches. Social sciences is another domain where focus group research is applied and new fields such as communication and health are gaining respect. In the ergonomics and human factors domain focus group interviews have been used for quite a while (Caplan 1990) with the aim to define new product requirements, concepts, and ideas. User-centered design processes typically begin with conducting a series of focus group interviews, using questionnaires, or observing and interviewing potential users. For user interface design, focus group interviews have been used to evaluate early product concepts from the users' point of view. Focus group analyses are often complemented by inspection methods, e.g. heuristic evaluation, which are based on the ergonomic or human factors experts' point of view. The emphasis of focus group interviews for user interface design can be either on a small subset of usability issues, or on the whole concept of a new system.
Relation to similar techniques: Focus group interviews are organized and more formal than other interviews with small groups. Interviews with one person at a time provide more flexibility compared to focus group interviews. Subjective user preferences, attitudes and experiences can be probed in-depth. But one-to-one interviews have the disadvantage of being very time consuming, hard to analyse and to compare. Focus groups can be superior to individual interviews for obtaining perceptions and beliefs because the group environment may allow greater anonymity and therefore help individuals to disclose more freely. A drive for social desirability or a tendency to impress the interviewer may be diminished by the presence of peers. Also, the group format itself is more active and may stimulate greater participation. Another advantage is that each participant is not required to answer every question or respond to every comment yielding more genuine and substantial responses. Focus groups provide the opportunity to elicit a range of opinions. The data available are often richer and fuller than the data available from an individual interview.
Focus groups can be demanding in terms of time and number of users needed to receive approximately representative results. Email and computer conferencing may be used as a cheap way of approximating the focus group approach without the expense of gathering users in one place. Yang (1990) demonstrated that email can be used to collect information on which design decisions should be made in the early design stages and that informal and inexpensive techniques can already make real improvements to the usability of software. "Electronic mail systems over wide area networks provide a cheap, timely and available method for conducting an informal survey of users' views. The questions were brief and the sample size was small but that did not diminish its usefulness. The survey aimed at bringing to the fore issues about undo support which users thought significant or problematic." (Yang 1990, p. 550). Note that data may be biased because computer conference subscribers are only a specific subset of potential users. On the other hand the data, gathered by computer conferencing may be from expert users, who may face needs that will later be general in the marketplace long before novice users encounter them.
For the construction of a questionnaire pilot work is needed to prevent misunderstandings of users answering the questions. Focus group studies could help in the development of such a questionnaire. Questionnaires can be used for follow-up studies, when it has become clear from focus group analysis what questions to ask users and what kind of terminology to use. A disadvantage with questionnaires is that more subjects are needed compared to focus group studies. An advantage of this technique compared to focus groups is that it requires less time to apply a questionnaire and that the procedure can easily be repeated.
References:
Vaughn, S., Schumm, J.S., & Sinagub, J. (1996). Focus Group Interviews in Education and Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Nielsen, J. (1993). Usability Engineering. (Chapter 7.3 Focus Groups, pp. 214-225). San Diego, CA: Academic Press, Inc.
Caplan, S. (1990). Using focus groups methodology for ergonomic design. Ergonomics 33(5), 527-533.
Yang, Y. (1990). Interface usability engineering under practical constraints: A case study in the design of undo support (pp. 549-554). In D. Diaper, D. Gilmore, G. Cockton, & B. Shackel (Eds.), Proceedings of the IFIP INTERACT '90 (Cambridge, UK, 27-31 August). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
These and other more general references can be found on our references page.