After creating a solid prototype of our product, the R&R box, it was time to get feedback on all of our hard work. I thought it was incredibly useful to do a practice focus group in class. Since I was the moderator, I felt a lot more comfortable after running through the script once and seeing which questions worked and which needed to be altered/removed.
While we were recruiting for our actual focus group, we ran into a few issues. We knew we wouldn’t be able to get grad students that lived in cities to participate (unless we did a virtual focus group, which we decided against). After accepting that our group would have to be made up of William and Mary students, we had some issues finding graduate students who had spare time during their crazy end of semester schedules. We ended up with 8 female undergraduate students – though we did hope to have a mix of undergraduate and graduate students, I wasn’t too worried. Many of these students are planning to get higher degrees and almost all of them currently live with roommates, so I thought it wouldn’t be too hard for them to put themselves in a graduate student’s shoes.
Even though we reminded our participants a few times beforehand about the commitment, only 5 of the 8 students showed up to the actual focus group. Luckily, we recruited a larger number in case something like this occurred, but it was still frustrating. The people who did show up, however, were incredibly helpful and put effort into each part of the session. Compared to our practice run in class, our actual focus group participants were a little quieter. I think because they were strangers and maybe weren’t completely aware of what design thinking entails, it took a little longer for them to confidently share their opinions. As the moderator, I tried to find a balance of interjecting and silence. Like we’ve discussed throughout the design thinking process, silence isn’t always bad! It was hard to not fill the gaps, but I knew that eventually someone would speak up and get the ball rolling. Additionally, having participants write their thoughts down on paper first really helped spark discussion. Using blank pieces of paper and the feedback grids pushed our participants to not just think of the “good” parts of our product, but also come up with suggestions and questions. And when it came time for discussion, it was easy to ask, “Can someone share what they put in the top left square of their grid?”. By having starting points, our participants literally just had to read what they already wrote down – and from there, more useful insights came up.
Overall, I enjoyed the focus group process and we ended up with a lot of great suggestions and feedback. Even though my group hit a few bumps in the road, we ended up feeling confident in the R&R box and how we could improve it moving forward.