Workshops and focus groups

Do you have a product that needs to meet real users? I plan and run an evening that gives you documented feedback to work from.

This is for you if you have something concrete to put in people's hands. A product, a prototype, a feature. And you want to know what confuses them, what they are missing, and what actually works.

How an evening is built

1. Safety first. Participants introduce themselves: who they are, their background and daily life. I say it out loud: it is the product we are testing, not them.
2. Domain intro. A short note on the field or the problem the product solves, so everyone is on board.
3. Product intro. What is it, who is it for, and why does it exist? Focus on understanding, not selling.
4. Try it yourself. Participants unbox and set it up without help: first use and first reactions.
5. Workshop. The structured part with post-its, exercises and the same questions for everyone. About 35 minutes.
6. Wrap-up and imagination phase. What did people say, what surprised them, and what ideas came up?

What you get afterwards

• All notes from the evening, photographed and written out. What I could not read with confidence is marked as uncertain.
• The answers grouped into themes in an affinity diagram, so you see patterns and not just single quotes.
• A spider map of the most important findings.
• The learnings phrased as directions to test, not as finished solutions.

Workshop or focus group

A workshop is structured and task-based. Participants do something with the product and take notes as they go. It finds concrete barriers and ideas for improvement.

A focus group is conversation-based. Participants talk about reactions, attitudes and habits. It gives context and an understanding of who they are and what they actually think.

Choose a workshop if you have something to put in people's hands. Choose a focus group if you want to understand the problem better before you build anything.

What I take care of

• The session, tailored to what you want to learn
• Props and materials for the evening
• Facilitation and keeping time
• The documentation afterwards

We work out participants and venue together.

Honest about experience

I have run one workshop like this, for my own product Watt-E. It was the first, and it taught me what I would do differently. That is built into the flow above. If you are looking for someone who has run a hundred, I am not the right person. If you are looking for someone who takes it seriously and writes it down afterwards, get in touch.

See how it went in practice: the Watt-E case.