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

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.

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

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