Jonathan Ive talking to the Royal College Of Art. Magazine editors need to read this quote as much as designers. The tyranny of focus grouping has deadened magazine craft. People make products they think some fantasy reader will like rather than the best and most exciting publication possible. Mr X might not exist and even if he does, he doesn’t necessarily know what he wants. (via brokenbottleboy)
The anti-consumer who gets “offended” by a rad new product is often also a fantasy, of course, or at least is someone who’d be outside the target market for a thing anyway.
Focus groups - like market research in general - are a nice Aunt Sally for people who have a corporate job but like to think of themselves as the type of person who doesn’t. Of course they’re not the solution to everything but the reason focus groups go bad isn’t because talking to people about the stuff you’re making is an inherently terrible idea. If you end up letting a focus group kill off something awesome or make something crap then the explanation is likely to be one of the following:
- You recruited the wrong people.
- You asked the wrong questions.
- You used the focus group at the wrong point in the process.
- You gave the focus group way too much power in the process.
- It wasn’t actually that awesome (or: it’s less crap than you think)
If it’s 1 or 2, it might be your supplier’s fault. If it’s 3 or 4, it’s probably your fault. If it’s 5, you’ll thank them later.
Of course, it might also be that you are a magical snowflake genius whose ideas are so awesome that any contact between them and other people will crush them like a flower is crushed beneath the wheel of a dung-cart. If that’s the case then yeah, stay well away from focus groups dude.
