From the course: Good Design Drives Business
Focus groups are terrible
From the course: Good Design Drives Business
Focus groups are terrible
(energetic guitar music) - Good design and communication are important to every business. And equally important, is knowing how to work with designers to achieve those goals. One important thing to understand is that focus groups are terrible. Great work is not achieved by committee or by consensus, great work is achieved by someone with a strong vision or an original idea and the leadership skills necessary to convince others to take that creative journey with them. That journey should not pass through the sterile one-way-mirrored rooms that house focus groups. It's not that the people in those groups don't take the responsibility seriously, being asked and paid to weigh in on the aesthetic qualities of anything is a pretty big deal to most people. So they want to do good, but they have no real way of knowing what good means in this context. Group settings like these often lead people to mistake criticism for intelligence. A guy who says, hey, that's cool, I really like it, may not seem as smart as those with something negative to say. So critical comments rule the room, even absurd things like that shade of red is weird, and it can be difficult to ignore negative feedback. It's an act of bravery to continue to like that weird shade of red after the group has spoken or to say, how can a shade of red even be weird? Focus groups rate only what the people in them are already comfortable with, or what we already understand as being good. But good design should be distinct and specific to a particular client's needs. (electronic guitar strums)
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