Independently organized two focus groups to understand the software selection process of non-technical users
Highlights
Methods applied: Focus Group: Recruitment, Moderation, & Analysis, and Affinity Diagramming
Product Website: fossfor.us
Product Overview
Fossfor.us is a website for non-technical users to discover and download open source software.
Process
I created a recruitment announcement and recruited via Craigslist, and used a screener to select six participants for the focus group who met the target user profiles. Before holding the focus groups, I prepared a list of questions to guide the discussion. I then moderated the one-hour focus groups, while the product manager was an observer. After transcribing the audio, I captured the information from the key discussions into separate notes, and created an affinity diagram by sorting the notes into categories.
Result
After analyzing the notes from focus group, I prepared a report for the product stakeholders. The report contained
- Four behaviors that non-technical users exhibit when searching for software
- Seven design recommendations for the product to support non-technical users’ software search process
Recommendation
Mouly did a great job of helping me to understand the basics of contextual design, and helped us create more usable sites. Fossfor.us was my first chance to work with Mouly, and his participation helped us understand our target audience and to focus our development efforts on things that make a difference to those users. I’d definitely recommend Mouly. – Mark Ramm, Senior Web Developer, Geeknet