Brooke Baldwin

Virginia, I couldn’t agree more.

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One of the very few things that I will miss about living in St. Louis is the close proximity of snowboarding.  Though the season is as short as the runs and more time is spent riding the lifts, Hidden Valley has been a great pleasure to me.  Adios, HV.

love,

b

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Over the years I’ve had a chance to both run and participate in focus groups. I’ve run them for work experiments and I’ve participated in them for consumer products research.  And I’ve always thought they were a bad idea.

Marketing professionals around the world rely on these archaic, anachronistic studies to validate the products they’re trying to put into the chaotic market place.

Focus groups are a bad idea because they force conformity amongts a group that likely doesn’t agree. Each focus group will have at least one dominant personality that the others will agree with externally, just to get along. The overriding pressure that individuals feel is that getting along is more important than expressing their unique position. So they avoid the conflict and subjugate their opinion to that of the dominant person. It’s like mixing soup, salad, entree, and dessert into a bowl. It tastes like shit. But appreciated individually: a delicious meal.

You don’t believe me? Sign up for a consumer marketing focus group. Go in with some wacky opinion and stick to it. I guarantee you’ll be able to convince others. I’ve done it. The poor moderator didn’t have a chance.

And now we’ve got a new study out in the journal Neuron that  supports what most usability practictioners have known for years: focus groups should be used with extreme caution.

Yes, there are some instances when they’re useful. Early in the product lifecycle - very early, when large strategic decisions are being validated. Once you clip into more detailed designs and prototypes throw away the focus groups and do one-on-one testing; detailed product requires detailed tests.

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