User-Centred Requirements Handbook |
A focus group brings together a cross-section of stakeholders in a discussion group format. Views are elicited by a facilitator on relevant topics. Meetings can be taped for later analysis. Useful early in requirements specification. Helps to identify issues which may need to be tackled and provides a multi-faceted perspective on them.
Typical Application Areas
Useful to consider particular questions of user need or design options.
Benefits
Allows the analyst to rapidly obtain a wide variety of views from a range of people with widely differing but relevant perspectives.
Limitations
Social factors such as peer pressure may lead to inaccurate reports. Techniques such as Delphi groups can be used to compensate for this.
What you need
Meeting facilities and audio/video recording facilities if a record of the session is desired.
Process
1. 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.
2. 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'.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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
See guidelines provided for group discussions.
• Since the group is focusing on a set of concepts, make sure that the discussion stay 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.
Further information
Blomberg, Giacomi, Mosher and Swenton-Hall (1993)
Macaulay (1996), Preece (1994), Poulson et al (1996), Caplan (1990).