Remote Focus Groups: advantages vs disadvantages
Diving into conducting focus groups during the pandemic.
Hola! It’s Mel here. I joined Made Tech as a User Researcher on 29 November so this makes it my third week! (I don’t know where the time has gone?)
In my last job I was part of a start-up. We were designing an app for tradespeople. I joined them whilst the first lockdown was in full motion meaning that my UX career has been entirely remote.
I still remember planning my very first focus group and worrying about the awkwardness and the downsides of doing them over Zoom. You know, what if the link stops working? What if the internet cuts out? What if my laptop decides it needs to do an update that very second despite automatic updates being turned off? How many times will I have to prompt them that they are in fact on mute?
When it came to it, the link worked, my internet and laptop behaved well and I did have to prompt them to unmute themselves more times than I can count BUT it did go well!
Here are the disadvantages that stood out to me:
It’s difficult to notice or read their non-verbal cues. Did they frown in disagreement to my question or did they just get a message?
Users feel less comfortable speaking up. Zoom calls can just feel awkward by nature.
Users may not know how to use a computer, which can lead to them declining the invitation altogether.
Despite this, I definitely found myself more at ease conducting them over Zoom. Personally, it made me feel like I was more in control of where the conversation was going and following up on their verbal cues was much easier than I expected. This might have been because they were directly in front of me on a screen and generally people avoid speaking over someone, especially, on a Zoom call where if you do that, there is no way of hearing what the other person is saying. To me, it’s the equivalent of having to turn the music down so you can see where you’re driving better – being able to focus on one source of information. Remotely, you can also control the group dynamics better. You can ask the participants to “raise their hand” when they have a point they would like to add to avoid one or two people from dominating the discussion.
This leads me to some of the advantages of remote focus groups:
No travel or room costs. Not to mention the stress of booking a room and having to make sure everyone can get to it.
They save a good amount of time. Not once did I have to account for traffic or travel time.
No travel requirements mean it’s more accessible for people who could have struggled to get there in the first place. This includes people with disabilities, financial struggles and/or children.
I could reach out to participants all over the world. Only a matter of getting their time zone right so I wasn’t asking them to participate at 2am.
No booking room requirements. I didn’t have to worry about having elbow room or making sure there was a desk and screen in the room. And everyone can see you without having to turn their heads.
Participants are also able to keep their cameras switched off which can help them feel more comfortable talking about more sensitive subjects.
Lastly, it’s very important to be extra organised. I wanted to share with you just a couple of tips that I’ve found that help remote focus groups run as smoothly and stress free as possible:
Send out invites and consent forms ahead of time – at least 2 days before if you can
Make sure participants have downloaded the required software (like Zoom) – you can always call them and walk them through it if they are struggling
Triple-check your links and invites to make sure they take the participants where you want them to go
Have a note taker with you if you can – that way you won’t lose focus (if you can do both with ease, hats off to you)
This might be a really obvious one, but make sure you have all your scripts and any collaborative tools open and ready
I also like to write a checklist for all of the tips above to make sure I don’t forget anything
So to conclude, in terms of sheer quantity, the advantages do outweigh the disadvantages for sure. And there are some good tips out there to help you make the experience smoother. That being said, personally, I’m not certain if the added convenience and money saved is worth missing out on the non-verbal cues. Those can sometimes be more telling than what the users actually say.
Being in the same room as the people you’re trying to read allows you to connect with them to truly understand their pain points. Given the choice I would always opt in for an in-person focus group, but, we are still enduring the difficulties of a global pandemic, so the best thing we can do is keep calm and keep focus grouping!