Groups vs. Individuals
In my experience groups are best for generating ideas or gaining a gut-level understanding of a target audience – for example, how a certain set of users feel about particular issues, their cultural norms, or their buying process.

Talking with groups – vs. individuals - has the most value at the very beginning of a project, where your goal is to figure out the right product for particular types of users. Groups give you the opportunity to listen in on a conversation among people who share common characteristics relevant to your market (e.g., CTOs of medium-sized businesses, people who shop for food online, salespeople who manage contacts through their smartphones).

Well-moderated groups are not only entertaining and informative; they also spark creative thinking among both participants and observers as the conversation goes in surprising directions.

Use groups to generate and evaluate ideas

But… once you have the details of your product worked out it makes more sense to do research with individual users. Once you have the product design, you typically need to know whether the design is intuitive. It is more productive to give a single person (vs. a group) a set of tasks to perform with your product and then just observe the type of issues each person has. Usability studies with individuals tend to be somewhat cut and dried and a bit mechanical, though you can still learn about your users by asking them questions about this product fits into their world or how it compares to others they have tried.

Use individuals for detailed feedback
Here is an example that demonstrates how you might gain value by doing group interviews. Suppose you wanted to create a product to help small-business owners stay in touch with prospects. Before you spend time developing the product you need to learn about the distinct needs of this market, so you might run groups with small business owners in different industries such as professional services, hospitality, or the building trades.

The groups could be used to ask collective questions about the business owner's frustrations with the available products - where the gaps in the marketplace are, how much your targets would spend on a new product or service, what benefits they care about and how you might reach them.

You might also use the group for brainstorming and to create paper prototypes of the ideal product.

When working with both groups and individuals I often recommend setting up a panel of 15 to 20 participants whom we draw from for all our research activities. We use such groups to learn about the needs of the target audience and then invite each person to take part in one or more usability studies throughout the product development. I pick participants who have a reason to care deeply about the category so they’ll be more likely to stay engaged. Because they are working with my client’s product over time, they offer better ideas and feedback.

Either way, whether with groups or with individuals, being able to see your users in the flesh and hear them talk about the space will ignite your creative sparks and help you build a better product!

Kay

About Kay
Kay Corry Aubrey specializes in helping companies make their products more easily understandable to ordinary people through usability consulting, training, and team mentorship. Her expertise is in qualitative research, usability testing, and user interface design.  Since 2002 she has worked with organizations as diverse as Abt Associates, AT&T Mobility, iRobot, The Broad Institute, Columbia University Libraries, Constant Contact, NIH, Moxie Software, and the Mayo Clinic. She  teaches medical professionals about designing for usability within the Healthcare Informatics program at Northeastern University.

Please call us when you need objective expertise in how to make your products more successful. Our phone number is 781-275-3020 and e-mail Kay@UsabilityResources.net. We invite you to visit www.UsabilityResources.net for more information.