What are the dos and don’ts of running a Focus Group?

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I contribute to an ongoing series called Ask Women in Product. In this article, I talk about tips for running an effective focus group.

Focus groups can be immensely valuable for gathering feedback and ideas directly from your users and stakeholders. The thoughts in this article apply to either of these scenarios — user feedback groups or discovery-type sessions with your key stakeholders or even your own team.

Conducting a productive, valuable focus group session takes preparation. If you get a group of people in a room without a plan, you are bound to have a miserable couple of hours! Focus groups should be fun, both for the participants and for you! The best sessions I’ve participated in have had a variety of activities to keep the group active and engaged. And sometimes the best ideas and opportunities are discovered through these activities!

Things to consider before the session

Have a good cross-section of participants. Sometimes, as with internal stakeholders, you will not have a choice in your attendees. However, if you do have a choice, a group with a variety of product knowledge, technical skill, and backgrounds can help give you more well-rounded results. If you know your participants, balancing communication styles (introverts vs. extroverts) can also be beneficial.

Set the room up for comfort and efficiency. I like to use a room with lots of whiteboards. If I can’t find one like that, I’ll use the large sticky note flip chart pages instead. I always make sure to have more sticky notes that I think I’ll need, along with at least two sharpies per person. Also, plan for materials necessary for any other activities you’re going to have the group work on.

If you’ll be demonstrating your product, you’ll want to check the audiovisual equipment in advance to make sure you know how to hook your laptop up. If you are projecting, you’ll want to ensure that all chairs have a clear view of the screen. No one wants to be the participant sitting directly in front of the screen, with their back to it!

Depending on the length of the session, you may choose to provide refreshments. For a shorter session, coffee and other drinks are inexpensive, and the participants appreciate the effort. For longer sessions, ordering in lunch is always appreciated. By providing refreshments, you also get to keep your participants in the room, instead of having them leave for lunch or breaks. It can take valuable time to get back on track after a break if participants leave and focus on something completely different for half an hour!

Thank your participants. Your company likely has rules on what’s allowable in terms of rewards. Some companies issue payment to participants, while some others use small gift cards or company logo items as a small token of appreciation. Talk with your team to find out what your company normally does.

Things to do during the session

Know your goal and stick to it. Determine, ahead of time, what your goals are for the session. Is it greenfield ideation? Is it getting feedback on an existing product? Or is it defining opportunities or problem statements? Whatever it is, you’ll have an easier time keeping your group on track and will get more valuable information from your participants if you stay focused on your goal.

Use an impartial facilitator if one is available. The facilitator could be another product manager or anyone with an understanding of the discovery and feedback process. When you have someone else keeping track of the time, taking down notes, and leading the activities, you can be free to learn as much as you can during the session. Note: If you rely on a colleague to facilitate, you should also be willing to reciprocate when they need a facilitator.

Use tactile activities to keep your participants engaged. There are many types of activities available to focus group facilitators, and I’ll list a few of my favorites here:

  • Crazy Eights sketching exercise: Great for getting people loosened up and creative; gives you great perspectives on your product as well as potential design ideas.

  • Sticky-note brainstorming: This technique can be used for problem identification, pain point identification, and solution idea generation.

  • Dot voting: I picked this one up in my community-organizing work, but it works equally well in software development. Use this technique to hone in on your brainstorming ideas and get clarity on which ones to explore further!

As the activities are in progress, it’s important to encourage participation from all attendees. Some will be more comfortable participating, while others may need extra encouragement.

Keep the session light and engaging. The attendees are volunteering to be there to help you and your product, so make it fun!

Common Pitfalls

Taking product feedback personally. This trap can very quickly derail a session. The focus group needs to be a safe space for people to freely share their opinions and ideas. We all know you love your product — but you are here to find out what other people think and what their ideas are. Please see their feedback as the gift it is and use it to make your product even more awesome.

Debating technical feasibility or level of effort. Your attendees are unlikely to have the skillset to discuss that, so please don’t respond to ideas with comments like “We can’t do that” or “That’s way too hard!” You will have plenty of time to sort out the feasibility and level of effort later, with your engineers. Don’t put that burden on your stakeholders and don’t stifle their ideas by making them guess at how hard it might be to implement their idea.

Becoming frustrated. Focus groups are full of people. People are unpredictable and often don’t do exactly what you want them to. The one thing you can count on with a focus group is that it will not go as planned! Use this as an exercise in patience and flexibility. Even groups that don’t go as planned can give you valuable insights into your product. Take what feedback you can get, be thankful for it, and move on.

Wrap it up cleanly

Review what the group accomplished in today’s session. Let the group know what you plan on doing with the information you’ve gathered. Thank them for their time and input.

Take photos of your completed activities. This form of documentation will prove useful as you look back on the results. If you take photos, you usually won’t have to save all the sticky notes and sketches.

Take the results back to your team and determine how you’ll handle them — incorporate them into your backlog, file them away in your icebox, or use them to conduct further sessions with your own team to refine them further.

Use these resources to learn more

Thank you to Vidya Venkatesh for editing this piece.

This article was originally published in the October 1, 2018 edition of Ask Women in Product. The original, complete article can be found here.