Chat didn't work that well for doing online focus groups. Fortunately, that wasn't the end of online qualitative. The Bulletin Board Focus Group has grown up, and is truly a viable option now. It offers some unique advantages over face-to-face, and the barriers to key insights aren't as big as you might expect.
I set up a demo site for clients a few months ago, with the help of a friendly vendor, and promised them a report if they tried out the demo. Let's just say that few of them were brave enough to post anything ... or more likely, my topic wasn't really very engaging, i.e. what do you think about this technology?
So I had to wait until I had a real project finished to produce some insights into this methodology.
Let me tell you a bit about the project. The project was a coast-to-coast study of financial planners. So they are entrepreneurial, independent, well read and opinionated, and busy, busy, busy. We wondered how they would react to the online concept.
To ensure we got the insights needed, we did half the project using telephone interviews, and half the project using bulletin board groups. I found results were quite comparable overall, but the two techniques together made a great combination.
Here's what we learned about using a BBFG for a group discussion:
EASY INTERFACE None of the respondents had seen this before, but they quickly got the hang of things. I provided instructions in the invitation e-mail body, in the attachment, and on the landing page of the discussion. I know some moderators also telephone people beforehand. This might be more important where the topic has low intrinsic interest.
MORE FUN THAN A SURVEY Many of my respondents were very familiar with online surveys, and they were pleasantly surprised to be able to interact. These were typical of the comments I received:
"This was fun and informative"
"I enjoyed the other participants comments. Todays exercise was very interesting."
KEEPING IT INTERESTING You can cover a surprising amount of territory over three days, even if you are only asking people to log in once or twice a day for 10 minutes. In fact, at the end of day 2, we were still formulating the day 3 discussion. In face-to-face environments, I like to use a lot of different activities and projective exercises to keep things lively and get different angles on the topic. I wondered if a projective exercise would work ...
PROJECTIVE CAN WORK! I used the whiteboard to set up a dinner party scenario, and asked people to tell me about it. We got wonderful posts, and considerable insight. Clearly there is no way to do a collage in this medium, at least not yet. But many other exercises work well. I also used something I normally do with Post-It notes, a three-wishes exercise. This works well on the board.
WRITTEN WORDS CAN BE BETTER When people have a chance to formulate their thoughts and go at their own speed, this brings out some people who might otherwise be fairly quiet, or simply need more mental processing time. It also permits crisp, yet detailed expressions. We were looking for some great verbatims about the product, and we definitely got that. We also heard a number of new ideas that spontaneously came up in discussion, just as in a face-to-face group.
BE CAREFUL ABOUT SCREEN NAMES This was a national discussion, and we were just using first names. But I should have guessed that someone would recognize someone else. Not from their name, but from their characteristic verbal mannerisms. Even though they were three time zones apart, they were with different arms of the same organization. The west-coast person e-mailed me offline to drop out, and explained their unwillingness to be forthright under the circumstances. We shifted to a phone interview, but I will definitely be more alert to this in future. Some professional communities are that small.
On the other hand, the medium seems to encourage stream-of-consciousness types of responses (not unlike blogging!) This would be wonderful for really sensitive topics.
DIVERGENT VIEWS A few people wanted to say something that felt "controversial" to them in the context of the other comments. A moderator paying attention to body language would see this reticence and try to elicit the source. Oddly, this kind of worked online. When I posted follow-up probes in a couple of instances, individuals sent me detailed comments by e-mail, saying they preferred to answer off-line. Very similar to when a respondent stays behind after the official discussion has ended to provide a few more thoughts. So just as in face-to-face, the moderator needs to have their senses and intuition running on high alert mode.
NO NAPPING IN THE AFTERNOON Making this format work requires the moderator to keep it lively. This means frequent e-mails to respondents to thank them for contributions, tell them I've posted a followup, and constant logging-on to respond to new posts. I knew this group would have lots of early risers, so I had to ensure my questions would be up early for the east-coast participants. And quite a few posted at the end of their day, which was quite late on the west-coast. Meanwhile, I was also busy programming changes to the next day's discussion, and having brief exchanges with the client.
THE MORE THE MERRIER I'm one of those that prefer somewhat smaller focus groups face-to-face, in order to get more in-depth information. (Could be the type of topic I'm usually doing.) I knew online usually worked best with larger groups, which was definitely my experience. And indeed, less than 10 people feels a lot less energetic, in part due to the time zone issue. As one of my demo clients said "it feels like I'm alone in here".
So I'm now an apostle for this technology. I love doing face-to-face work, and I'm happy travelling to new places to do it. I didn't actually miss the interaction, because there is LOTS of interaction. This is good stuff, and for the right project, is a better choice than face-to-face.
