Wants and Needs Analysis (a type of focus group meeting)

1. Wants and Needs Analysis(a type of focus group meeting) Alfred Kobsa University of California, Irvine

2. Brainstorming session A wants and needs analysis is a special kind of focus group in which participants brainstorm about product features and services they would like to see. • Storming questions: • What activities would you like to perform with this product? • What information would you like to get from this site? • How would you like to accomplish a particular task? • Problems: • People don’t always know what they really would like/need • People often cannot predict how much they would like/use a specific feature. • What people say they do or will do is often different from what they actually do or will do.

3. Rules for Moderator • Have personality • Ask questions • Stay focused • Avoid behaving like a participant • Keep the activity moving • Keep the participants motivated/encouraged • No critiquing • Everyone should participate • No one should dominate

4. Rules for Brainstorming Process • During the session • Tell participants to imagine an ideal world / ideal product(“nothing is impossible”) • Tell participants that no comment is “wrong” • Disallow designing • Comments get written down (possibly by a trained scribe) • Comments are posted to be seen by all • (Probe answers to find the “real” need/opinion) • During or after the session (and after several different sessions) • Duplicates become eliminated • Answers become grouped/hierarchically structured • Answers become ranked • Statistics are made across different sessions