Through our (Hoffi) branding workshops with our clients, we do a lot of work on research and data gathering . The traditional way being to collect information by an arranged focus group scenario. In our experience though you very rarely get true insight and knowledge from such exercises. In the end most of our work centers around being an agony aunt, and putting people at ease. This generally take most of our time, and then form there we look into the aims of the project we are working on. I came across an article by Ravi Sawhney about focus groups and how through the production of real prototypes they get more from the focus groups. This does seem to be a no brainer in some sense as, people mis-interpret, see in a different light, misunderstand items very easily. The more real you can make the focus group the better.
For us we also like to take people out of the concept of being in or at a focus group session. By breaking down social boundaries then the data gathering and knowledge we gain seems to be of a much higher quality compared to traditional focus groups.
