INTERVIEWS
&
FOCUS GROUPS
Two valuable tools in the research toolbox, focus groups and interviews drive a deep understanding of a project's target audience. Fully virtual facilitation during the pandemic expanded my skillset. Whether sessions are in-person, remote, or hybrid, I incorporate live chat windows, virtual documentation, and interactive polls to gather a broader and more diverse set of inputs and overcome biases.
Interviews
A central collaborative board allows multiple contributors to collaborate across time zones
Both themes and unique contributions—the "ah-has!"—are important when extracting findings from interviews
Interviews and focus groups are both critical for finding universal themes while identifying factors that make individual sites unique
Often when not completing the primary research, I can simplify interview themes from other sources (as I did here with interview from Earnts & Young)
Transcription and AI services help to document interviews and begin to extract themes
FOCUS GROUPS
Often, teams within the same organization have never had a chance to stop and talk about their common needs, workshops are an enlightening way to find common ground
I incorporate the tools I was "forced to use" during the pandemic to level the playing field and gather richer information from a broader set of voices
Online tools offer live results (when appropriate) and simplify comparing responses across sessions
Focus groups and interviews together create a huge amount of data and bring a rich pool of individual sentiments