Focus group

Welcoming and running a group takes time and energy. We recommend having at least two people to facilitate the session. Arrivals, which often happen in dribs and drabs, and the closing of the session are moments that can take a while. In some cases, the client may want to take part in the session, either in person, behind a one-way mirror, or remotely through a live stream.

A focus group needs a meeting room big enough to hold the group. So that everyone can talk to the others, you generally plan a way for people to identify themselves (a badge or a name card, for instance). You often need to display materials on the walls. If you want to capture the discussion, plan for a microphone and/or a camera.

The exercise is harder when the group is remote, particularly when it comes to keeping every participant engaged for the whole session. When bringing the participants together in one place is too complicated, it remains a workable option. As is often the case in UX research, you have to find the best compromise to meet the goals of the project.

As a rule, focus group sessions are recorded (audio and video capture) so you can go back over various passages after the session. Alongside the facilitator, a second expert handles the note-taking.

Since the data can be very different, the analyses are just as varied. When the focus group aims to trace user journeys or service maps, the analysis will mostly involve synthesising the discussions. For focus groups run as a collective debate, you can opt for discourse analysis.

It all depends on whether the focus group is part of a wider qualitative study or is run on its own. Since it brings together real users or real customers for one to several hours, the raw material can be a deliverable in its own right. Depending on the analyses, the results are gathered in a summary report with extracts from the discussions.