Research Methods: The Focus Group

type	Qualitative
number of participants	Small (6-10)

What is it?

In essence, a focus group is a guided group discussion on a topic that all participants have experience with.

You can use this method if you want qualitative results about a topic. It may be used to discover pain points in a product, explore a topic, find common workarounds for a problem or gather opinions about products. As it is a qualitative research method, the focus group is used to deepen our understanding of a topic or explore a topic. With a Focus Group, you can discover:

Why people do what they do. (Reflecting on behavior)
What they think about a product or a problem in general. (Opinions)
New problems and opportunities. (Exploring)
A person's perception of a question and the reasoning about his or her answer to that question. (Preparation for quantitative study)

Nowadays, there are methods to fully automate gathering raw data, especially in the area of HTI/HCI. Interviewing users could be a way to enrich this raw data with reasoning in order to draw conclusions.

When not to use this method

Conducting a focus group is not always useful. For a product research it is beneficial to let the user use the product while extracting information from it. During a focus group, this is not possible: the focus is on other people and the discussion; not on an artifact. Thus, there are better methods to use for:

Understanding how a user is using a product. (Behavior)
Seeing a user's response while using a product. (Emotions)

Next to this, there are some problems with group interviews: people can influence each other. If this is not what you want or foresee this will happen, you should look for another method.

Preparation

It is important to decide in advance what the goal of the focus group should be. What exactly do you want to know from about what topics? Be as specific as possible and use this to generate questions you ask during the focus group. The questions you develop should be open ended and neutral as to not influence the given answers. Create a schedule containing the topics and questions and a time-limit for each topic. Aim for around 1 hour total.

Make sure you invite a diverse group of participants, who all have the experience you are aiming for with your subject you are interviewing them about.

Make sure there is food and drinks for the participants.

Appoint a note-taker and/or prepare a recording device to capture all of the discussion.

Prepare forms of informed consent covering the following topics for people to fill in before starting the session:

Goal of the session
What is asked of the participants
Benefits and risks of participating
Withdrawal from the session or removal of data (even after session).
How the data will be used (including anonymization)
Details of the research: funding source, sponsoring institution, name of project, contact details for researchers, how to file a complaint.

Use props if necessary. A whiteboard can serve as a shared memory. A beamer may be used to have a discussion about a screen-based product or a product which must be enlarged (mobile app).

The Session

Start by introducing yourself (the moderator) and explain the goal of the focus group.

Lay out the rules for discussion and inform the participants of their role:

Participation in the focus group is voluntary. Participants may stop participating at any time.
It’s all right to abstain from discussing specific topics if you are not comfortable.
All responses are valid—there are no right or wrong answers.
Respect the opinions of others even if you don’t agree.
Try to stay on topic; we may need to interrupt so that we can cover all the material.
Participants should engage in the discussion and give room for everyone to answer.

Ask the participants to introduce themselves. Introduce the topics and ask your questions.

A few tips for moderating the discussion:

Give participants some time to think.
You don't have to ask each participant to answer separately: the goal is to start a discussion between the participants.
Don't let people talk too much/for too long, interrupt them if necessary (but don't be rude).
Don't let people talk too little. Ask them to comment directly if necessary.
Ask for additional information if something is not clear.

A few tips for interesting questions:

Ask participants to make lists, writing down several items that they find annoying or good, and discuss these in the group.
Let each participant show an amount fingers to quickly rate items. Ask for underlying reasoning where applicable. Remember these kind of questions also must be recorded via audio or writing, so speak the answers out loud.

At the end of the session, (optionally) ask participants to reflect. Next, the note taker should ask any questions that still remain open or things that need be followed up on. After this, the note taker should give a brief summary to confirm they did not miss anything.

Processing Results

Remove personally identifiable information.
Look for themes in your answers and assign them a weight with their importance.
You may be able to use the themes and other findings to ask new questions, which may or may not be tested quantitatively.

Example

This is a project in which a solution for working in autonomous cars was being developed.

Goals

Get reasons for/against doing office work inside a car.
Find out problems people are currently experiencing.
Gather workarounds for the problems.
Get feedback on the suggested concept

Schedule and Questions

Introduction: Setting the stage and informing about intent

We are working to make office work possible in autonomous cars. The car has autonomy level 4 or higher, which means there are no demands on the user to take over the steering wheel. We'd like to ask you to have a discussion based on a few questions.

Questions

Did anybody previously do any office work in transit?
What kind of work or study related activities have you previously done in transit?
- What does work/what does not work and why?
- Can you think of any solutions to [problems previously mentioned]?
Which features of a regular office space would you like to see in a "mobile office"?
Is there a difference in types of office work that can be done in transit?
Does the mobile office have any advantages over the regular office?
In which situation would you like to use the mobile office?
In which situation would you not like to use the mobile office?
Which limitations / challenges do you see creating a mobile office space?
Does journey time influence the mobile office usage or design?

Results

A full transcript was created of everything that was said during the session. Based on this, some conclusions were made. One is illustrated below:

A Lack of space

The work people do as office work requires a lot of space. The participants argued that the space inside the car, train or airplane was not enough to comfortably work. They told that there was often no table to be found, and if there was, it was just big enough for a laptop. They also would have preferred some more place to put their other belongings (mostly paper, notebooks, a mouse, etc.): “I think, for me, the main problem is space. When I work I would like to have both my laptop with me and a textbook. I don’t have the space for that inside the train”. In the car they used the sliding function of the chair to slide backwards, and create more space in front of them. They would then be able to use a laptop on their lap more comfortably. They thought it would be possible to solve this space problem inside the car, saying things like “I don’t need an enormous table, I only need some extra space to put some of my belongings”.