Observing the User Experience, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7

Focus Groups

Focus groups are structured, attentively moderated group discussions that reveal a target audience’s conscious preferences, recalled experiences, and stated priorities. They can tell you what features people value the most and why they value them. As a competitive research tool, they can uncover what people like best about competitors’ products or services and where those products and services fail. Sometimes they even reveal entirely new competitors or applications for the product or service.

Originally called “focused interviews,” focus groups emerged as a social research method in the 1930s, gained strength as a way to improve soldiers’ lives during World War II, then finally took center stage as a marketing tool in ...