how to...

FOCUS GROUP

carry out a

?

What is the aim?

This is similar to an interview but with multiple people and can be used at various different stages in a design process. In the early stages, it would be used to get multiple peoples opinion. It is the 'in-between' of an interview and a questionnaire. It is sometimes referred to as a 'group interview'

How to host one

The aim is to have a more open, casual conversation with a group of your stakeholders to understand their needs and wants in relation to your specific design brief. Just like to interview you will want to establish:

- what problems/frustrations they may have

- what they want

- generally to understand them more

- start to build a relationship with them

To start you will need a group of stakeholders relevant to the brief. Then follow the same steps as you did for the interview.

Write a short list of open questions to base your interview around
Before you start consider how you will record it and make sure you get permission from your interviewee's
Give them a brief introduction to explain why you are interviewing them
Don't rush and allow the group to talk freely. (if they are talking a lot around the topic you are doing well)
Avoid using leading questions
If the interview is not 'on topic' don't be afraid to bring in back by asking another questions / re-word it
Thank them for their time

We understand that is the current situation it may be more difficult than normal to meet a group of stakeholders but you could easily record your screen if you organise to do an interview over a video meeting of some description. Some services give you an option to record it directly, if not you could use add-ons, we would recommend 'Screencastify'.

How to use it?

You want to make sure you save your video (or audio file) into your video folder on drive. Once that is done you can embed it in your slides. You will then want to re-watch it and pull out the key findings into a list and document these on your slides. Finally, remember at any stage if you want to ask them more questions you can either 'meet' them again or communicate via email.