What Is The Method, And When Can It Be Used?

The 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 (Vaughan 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. Although the best use of this technique is in the early phases of the development process, it is also frequently associated with marketing.

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 turnaraound time in data collection and analysis (a focus group meeting plus a quick and rough analysis can be performed easily within a day)

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 them incorporated into the measure.

Typical Application Areas

It is useful when the design team is considering particular questions of user need or design options.

Benefits

It allows the analyst to rapidly obtain a wide variety of views from a range of people with sometimes widely differing but relevant perspectives.

It can be used very early in design.

Limitations

Social factors such as peer pressure may lead to inaccurate reports. Techniques such as Delphi groups can be used to compensate for this.

It is easy for a novice to unduly influence the users.

This method does not yield any quantitative measurement at all. It is strictly formative.

What you need

Meeting facilities and audio/video recording facilities if a record of the session is desired.

Process

The facilitator is selected from technical personnel who have a stake in the successful development of the product. A range of issues to be addressed is drawn up. A group of between 6 - 8 representative users is invited to attend. Each focus group meeting should last between 45 and 60 minutes. If the product exists in a demonstrable version, the users should be given a chance to experience it before the meeting.

The facilitator introduces the issues to be discussed, and clarifies his role as an observer and facilitator of free discussion between the users. He may attempt to 'draw out' users who say little, and to suggest that users move to another topic. However he should not intervene directly in the discussion, should not attempt to 'explain' issues which have arisen, and should certainly not be seen in an evaluative role. He should stress that his primary role is 'to listen'.

It is common to tape-record the meeting, but an experienced facilitator should be able to reconstruct a meeting of this length from memory with a few notes to guide him.

Focus groups are useful to enable the design team to understand the vision the user community has of the product being developed, of the kind of uses the product could be put to, and the image the product should have. They can also bring to light annoying features of a product that have not been suspected and could have been missed out completely. It is usual in focus group work that the group itself undergoes a process of change as a result of meeting and discussing the issues. Focus groups are therefore often used when it is planned that new technology will be brought into an organisation in order to find out how the employees envisage that the technology will be used.

Multiple focus groups are frequently used (12 - 20 groups) with the proviso that no user should be present in more than one group to get as wide a range of views as possible. If different facilitators are used for some of the groups, then the result is more convincing still.

Practical guidelines

Since the group is focusing on a set of concepts, make sure that the discussion stays on the topics of the meeting.

If possible explain the concepts to be explored using slide shows, storyboards or other vehicles for embodying aspects of the system or product.

Provide several alternatives to emphasise the point that there is more than one possible solution and to stimulate discussion about common themes, gaps and problems.

Copyright EMMUS 1999.
Last updated: September 29, 1999.