Focus groups continue to be a valuable source of insight for organisations wanting to learn deeper insights into their past, present and future customers needs.
Whether it’s a retailer wanting to learn more about how customers will react to a new product or a pharma company wanting to understand how their products can better help patients, a focus group remains one of the key insight tools available to organisations.
One way in which the key conversations, ideas and insights coming out of a focus group session can be captured is by having a graphic recording created during the session itself. This large scale visual is created by a graphic recorder live in real-time on a large sheet of paper (circa 2.5m wide and 1.5m deep) using words, images and other visual thinking techniques. The example below is not from a focus group session (they tend to be confidential!), but gives you an idea of what a graphic recorder can produce during an event:
The benefits of using graphic recording to capture the outputs from a focus group session are:
- The graphic recording details how the comments, ideas and insights emerged during the focus group and how they are linked together. This adds an extra level of insight for the organisation on top of the actual content captured on the graphic itself. This is not always possible with more traditional methods such as bullet-pointed flip-chart lists etc.
- The participants see that the graphic recording is an accurate and truthful record of the focus group session and their comments and insights. This can further engage them with the session and build higher-levels of trust. This increased level of trust can encourage them to offer deeper, more personal insights than they otherwise might have done.