[Sigia-l] User Testing Vs. Focus Groups

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

Reading between the lines of Tom's question, I'm assuming he has been made
to "do a focus group" rather than planning one by choice. In which case, I
don't know of any best practice since so few UX people do such research for
the reasons given by Unger and Adrian.

As an aside, when we moved to a new office in London we scouted the area
for a nearby user testing facility we could use. We found a very nice place
round the corner which was perfect. Large comfortable observations rooms,
no traffic noise, friendly, professional staff and a welcoming feel to the
place. But they had no monitor in the observation room. They also had no
ethernet connections anywhere (and wireless signal was very weak). They
didn't even have a desk in the testing room.

"How did you do user testing when there's no way to see somebody's screen
from the observation room?", we asked.

They said they'd been a market research facility for over 20 years, but
none of their clients (large marketing companies) had ever asked them to
test a web site. Yet they were booked solid most days. So I guess focus
groups are being conducted probably way more than usability testing. Which,
when you look at a lot of commercial stuff, makes perfect sense...!

So I'm sure if you prod about enough there will be some best
practice guidelines somewhere, but the worlds of UX and marketing seem very
far apart:

http://mnav.com/focus-group-center/getmore-htm/

Jonathan





On 12 June 2013 09:43, Adrian Howard <adrianh at quietstars.com> wrote:

> 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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