My focus group set up idea!

Following recent events, I have decided to set up a focus group company run by myself, where I will take food and drink products off existing shelves and bring together groups to talk about them. I have been crafting this idea over a number of weeks so this is something I have not thought lightly about however today was the day I put action to the plan. I am a quick thinker and I am one to act upon carefully thought out plans and strategy which my passion and enthusiasm will be evident as I follow this idea through.

I have already contacted a few food and drinks brands which I hope will be interested in this market research activity. There are both benefits to the brands which come on board and myself. For them it will provide data surrounding consumer behaviour and the opinions about their products and why and when the audience chooses to engage with it. The benefits for me are to allow me to understand more about brand and consumer experiences and engagement. I really want to pursue a career in advertising or marketing and so this will really help me understand more about the industry. 

In the growth of this idea I am hoping to get some students from the course I am involved in too as when I have spoken about this have become interested. I am really looking forward to which brands want to come on board. If you have any thoughts or want to be involved don't hesitate to contact me via email. I would love to hear from you.

fffunction workshop

Today the last fffunction workshop was about information architecture, sketching, prototyping and user testing. 

We used the same hypothetical user profiles we created last week to create a structure for our website. For this we planned a website which would work for them considering all the potentials, failures and options. We then expanded it after to think about other users and what might drive them in their decision making when they work across the site. This got us really thinking as we had to create labels, push buttons and tagging. 

This was all done through simple sketches and the group I was working in really thought about how it would translate across different devices and platforms. This is really important when you are working on the content and how it will work across multiple devices with different people, each with different needs.

This then led to a prototype sketch with a model iPhone to mock up what we had produced in the small timeframe. 

Every site needs focus grouping or user testing and this was no difference. We used students who were not in the group to user test the site for us, this enabled us to check and see if we had considered each choice and we presented each task differently to each user. To aid us we also asked the user if they could think out loud when they were deciding on their choices.

The whole workshop led by fffunction was incredibly valuable and I would like to thank Adam and Dan for coming down each Friday. I am interested in keeping in touch to join in with their 'hack days' as this sounds very interesting and positive.