Hi Shima The quality of insight that you can get from one on one interviews is almost always better than focus groups. I think is point of view is pretty standard in and you'll find it in most research textbooks. A lot of UX specialists sneer at focus groups as a method - some consultancies refuse to use them, period. Why?
- opinions are easily influenced in group situations - it's hard to build rapport (which is necessary if you want to ask really probing questions) - it's easy for attendees to just "ride the wave" and go along with the conversation - in any conversation, only one person can speak at a time, which means you only end up with a small proportion of spoken words from each person. - it's tempting for moderators to ask what if? or If then? questions (e.g. if you used the product I just web demoed, would you find it easy / enjoyable?). These questions, though tempting, are well known to be unreliable. - as a result, critics claim that instead of gathering useful insights from all of the attendees, you end up with a collection of relatively trivial / shallow comments Focus groups seem like attractive things because they appear to deliver so much - qualitative depth research with impressive numbers of people in short periods of time. But for the reasons I've outlined above, many UX specialists see them as a false economy. A really skilled focus group moderator can reduce the impact of these problems (like Sarah - who's given you some great advice in the previous message) but they never completely go away. I wonder if this view is shared by everyone on IXDA - if anyone disagrees, it would be a welcome discussion! Harry On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:22 AM, Shima Kazerooni <shkazero...@yahoo.com>wrote: > Hi Harry > > We would like to get pre-screened participants' feedback on something. The > participants are all over the place and the format of the session will be a > focus group remotely instead of a 1-1 interview. > > Shima > > ------------------------------ > *From:* Harry <harr...@gmail.com> > *To:* Shima Kazerooni <shkazero...@yahoo.com> > *Sent:* Tuesday, January 27, 2009 1:32:35 AM > *Subject:* Re: [IxDA Discuss] Testing- Remote Focus Group > > Shima, > > When you say remote - do you mean a group of strangers calling in to a > conference call service? I can imagine that might be problematic. Have you > considered doing one-on-one telephone interviews instead of a remote focus > group? > > Harry > > > > -- > Dr. Harry Brignull > User Experience Consultant > http://www.90percentofeverything.com > + 44 (0)7920 474784 > > > > > > -- Dr. Harry Brignull User Experience Consultant http://www.90percentofeverything.com + 44 (0)7920 474784 -- Dr. Harry Brignull User Experience Consultant http://www.90percentofeverything.com + 44 (0)7920 474784 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
