Focus Group Testing

This post is part six of a project documentation series starting with the post: What is Capstone? That post will give you a lot of context on this project and the series. Through these posts, I will be documenting the process of my Senior Year Capstone course.

In this class, we participated in user testing which helps get real-world opinions from non-designers, classmates, or teachers. I personally find that people outside of these categories often catch things we would never see without a specific bias. A lot of times they will catch issues that need to be resolved. This is extremely helpful because you want to get as many kinks out as possible before launching the design. This way, you don’t waste your time/energy, and also it helps your design. I conducted user testing to help me get an outside view of my product as well as a better understanding of things I can work on. Mostly, I wanted to hear them point mistakes out, but also confirm some of my ideas.

Questions:

I focused my questions on more of the user experience with some of the questions touching on the design aspects. My questions were open-ended and were types of questions that seemed to fit my needs.

I asked questions such as:

• Did you find anything confusing?
• What do you feel the strengths and weaknesses of this project are?
• Who do you think this product would appeal to?
• Do you feel as though anything is missing?
• If you could change one thing about our product, what would it be?

Users

I showed my work to a few. different people. The first is a co-worker of mine (age 27) and is in the target audience. She loves plants and fun subscriptions. The next person is a friend (age 24) who is a plant novice but is interested in them. The third person is a family member (age 44) who is a huge gardener/plant lover who is highly advanced in this area.

Findings

Most of my feedback was very positive and encouraging. I have interviewed some of these people in the past and they are not afraid to give their honest thoughts, but surprisingly, they didn’t see much that wasn’t working. One thing that was pointed out to me was adding a page to the website with a catalogue of plants that any customer could receive, that way the buyer can get excited about their potential plant. Another idea that was given is the website telling you the plants that best suit you, but also adding an option for receiving plants that will give you more of a challenge.

Some of the positive feedback I received was that it was an easy-to-understand format, the overall idea and design catch your attention with catchy sayings, and keep it interesting. I also heard that the color selection is eye-catching and the layout is nice. Overall, most of them just wanted to see more because they were excited! One thing that was nice is hearing the feedback about who this would appeal to as their responses were completely accurate to my target audience.

Broad Insights

Something that I learned in this process is to enjoy it all as sometimes you’re going to get really positive feedback such as in this case, but sometimes you aren’t, and that’s ok. It is all a part of the process. This process has really taught me to work hard and be proud of my work, but also be open to critiques, new ideas, and suggestions. Some of the suggestions I got will really add to my product!

Re-design

From this experience and the suggestions that I received, some things I will be addressing are adding a plant catalog page to the website and adding an option for receiving plants that will challenge you.