[Sigia-l] User Testing Vs. Focus Groups

[Adrian Howard]

On 11 June 2013 19:02, Tom Donehower <tdonehower at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm concerned about "group think" and "mob rule" type comments as we review
> the application.
>
> Any thoughts about how to best show the application and which questions to
> ask to get the most valuable feedback from the group?
>

I'm going to be (possibly) mildly controversial and say that I've never got
significant value out of a focus group compared to one-on-one sessions due
to the issues you mentioned and others beside. This includes sessions I've
run, sessions I've observed, and sessions that others have done that have
been blown out of the water by further research / work.

I put this down to some combination of:
1) I'm really, really rubbish at facilitating them (entirely possible)
2) They're much, much harder to run well than most people thing.

So far the count of useful focus groups that I have encountered in my
career is zero... I'd be interested in what others have experienced.

Cheers,

Adrian
-- 
adrianh at quietstars.com / +44 (0)7752 419080 / @adrianh / quietstars.com
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