8 - Focus Groups: Target Persona

One of the evaluation methods that we used is having a Focus Group session with our target personas. Focus Groups as they say is a qualitative research to find out more about the user's reaction to an interface and have an equal contribution towards the design evolution in product life cycle. This has come up very handy because it is an easy and low costly way to gather a group of people to cross communicate their ideas and actually come up with design modifications.

We gathered all our target personas together to give us a detailed feedback on our product design. One of us acted like a moderator who mediated the discussion and gave everyone a chance to speak about in the discussion. A brief conversation amongst the parents of target personas was recorded as follows:
Abbreviation: Britney's Parents (BP), Dennis's Parents (DP), William's Parents (WP), Moderator(M)

DP: I think my child can use all these physical features on the console like pen, buttons and slider immediately. However, he might have to explore a bit before he can use the touch screen, camera and eraser.

WP: Yes, I agree. However, touch screens are quite common and intutive things for kids nowa days. William often plays around with my PDA at home and asks me to let him write on my tablet now and then. It will be great for kids to have their own toy to work with.

DP: Dennis will be actually very excited to own a product like this. I guess after a while he would just not leave playing with this and learn at the same time. I can see great use of this and the physical design is just appropiate.

M: Do you have anything to say here Mrs BP?

BP: Yes, I was a bit taken back whilst thinking about how Britney would cope to use the touch screen, camera features, understanding a slider and use buttons in an appropiate way rather than pressing them like any other toy.

DP: At that age, kids are only fasicnated by pictures, animations, ryhmes and something they can lift and throw.

WP: Not to forget about the early scribbling they do on walls.

BP: That would really save my wallpaper, sofas and wooden worktops.

M: So as a group you have any modifications you think our product would need to change physically?

BP: Weight might be an issue for Britney.

DP: The screen might be too small and handles are too big in comparison.

WP: Yeh, if we can have a wider screen but otherwise appearance is great!.

M: Ok great! Let's see how the colour scheme would affect the overall appearance of the console.

So, we had a long conversation and had several suggestions and contributions towards design enhancement during the session. The process was highly fruitful because parents could actually talk aloud and clear any doubts they had about their child's needs and prospective products like our educational console. They talked about how technology is changing rapidly and is effecting upcoming generation. They also talked about this product could add extra value by having a parental control, knowledge games, have several different versions to cope with the age group difference from 19 months to 48 months. They also quite like the plastic feel yet water resistant and highly safe product. They were quite excited to exchange views on how their child would react if this were to given them as a surprise present. Some of them felt that the kids would open up the box and start using straight away whilst others were concerned that they would have to manually go through each feature to make it any usable for the child. The results of the focus group are summarized below:

• Age Group: Out of our discussion it was quite clear that there was a wide gap between the learning process of a 19 month old to a 48 month old. Although the product covered the learning aspects of the entire range in one way or the other, yet it would be extremely useful if we did have a highly focused age range. It will help the child in learning, be beneficial to parents, all the applications would be extensively used, the website will be constantly used for the updates and there will be more feedback from the child if the age group was shifted to 3 yrs and above.
  
• Wider screen/Attachable to external screen/TV/projector: The parents came to a conclusion to have a wider screen so the kids can have a larger workspace to work with as it will not put a lot of strain on their eyes. Also, if the console can be connected to external devices then some applications can be viewed at larger screens, when required.
  
• Selectable Colour Scheme: The parents also came to a conculsion that have a variety of colour schemes for the console will have more options for the kids rather than in a basic blue and red. The colour should be extensive and be attractive for kids to buy in.
  
• Menu for all sections: The parents suggested that there was no Home button or a soft key to take them backwards when they were in a middle of a section. Hence, a menu(soft key) will be implemented that can user to home at any point of time.
  
• Colour pallette for Colouring in: Parents suggested that kids like to mix and match different colours and having a colour palette will give them an extra section to work on in the colouring in and drawing section. This can be implemented in advanced section to have the basic functionalities simple and straight forward.
  
• Certificates and Rewards: The kids can be constantly encouraged and motivated if they had some scores they can keep for their work and games on the console. This will be highly rewarding and motivating for them to learn more for an incentive. The parents should be able to modify and set the incentives for them from the parent console. Also, this shouldn't discourage the child in any form if they were not able to achieve any particular goal. So, this can be kept as a rewarding scheme and not a c competition against anyone.
  
• Foreign Languages: Having foreign language option in advanced level will really get kids started to learn any foreign language in a fun and creative way. The language lessons are quite expensive and highly tedious for a child to get motivated to learn one. However, with this console they can actually start up and can be sent for further learning later on.
  
• Templates for PhotoGallery: Parents also thought that it would a good idea to have templates for photo gallery so kids can cut and paste the pictures they have clicked in the templates of their action figures like superman, spider man or other themes like barbie, incredibles etc. During this process they can edit their own clicked pictures and save them to print them whenever required.
  
• Parent Control Console: The parent control console will be highly useful to download the content form the web and also in keeping a track of how their child is doing in different sections. It might even display or highlight one of their child's great interest in one of the sections or more to build up on that. E.g. if you know that your child really likes to solve mathematical puzzles and is doing extremely well then you can download more puzzles or quiz games involving mathematics to push your child in the right direction.
  
• Music Section having highlighted keys: Parents The parents have also suggested that it would be good to have highlighted keys as the child is playing the music composition on the screen as it will enhance the speed of learning.
  

The focus group discussion has backed us up by giving us a go ahead on the positives of our product. It has also highlighted the areas where modifications can be done to get a better product in the end. The results have streamlined our design decisions and given us brilliant ideas to give the best to our target audience. It has also proved to be a time efficient process for quality results at the end.
Ref: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/services/focus-groups.shtml