I read an interesting article in the Economist a few days ago - Pictures as Passwords [needs subscription]. Here's an excerpt :

"Computer security: Passwords are a cheap, cheerful and ancient security measure. But might it make more sense to use pictures instead?

........A nonsense word made up of numbers and letters, or the first letters of each word in a phrase, is more secure. But too many such pA55w0rds can be difficult to remember, particularly since office workers now, on average, have to remember passwords for between six and 20 systems. No wonder 70% of workers forget their password at some time or another, forcing companies to spend an average of $18 per user per year dishing out new ones. And forcing employees to use different passwords, and to change them regularly, can be counterproductive: they are then even more likely to forget their passwords, and may end up writing them down. Might the idea of the password, which is thousands of years old, have finally had its day?......."

6:42:14 PM    comment []  trackback []

danah shares her experiences of participating in a digital focus group, where she misses the nuances, the colour, the tone and gestures ....

"We were all assigned random logins. This meant that no one took the time to personalize them and thus, there were a lot of little AIM men talking. Because i was using iChat, i couldn't differentiate the AIM men and i found this consistently confusing. Nothing was known of the participants, although aspects of their interests and values emerged through conversation. Of course, the problem was that i couldn't differentiate the speakers so i'd learn something about one AIM man and not know how to connect it back to that AIM man when the s/he spoke again. Very confusing. Thus, i tried not to model gender or other attributes in my head and just stick to text, line by line. This made it feel very un-focus group-y.

The questions came as fast as they did in the interview and so i found myself scrolling fast trying to keep up. I also found that i did not like the text i was producing. Instead of trying to flesh out nuance, i answered every question as briefly as possible, with lots of information left to interpolation. Still, we were producing so much data that it was hard to keep up. Yet, what was that data worth? I don't think that i answered any question well or properly contextualized anything. Still, i rambled on with stories and little anecdotes, hoping those would help.

To a certain degree, we bounced things off each other, but group gestures of affirmation and confusion were completely missing. Most everyone was focused on getting their text out as fast as possible"

It is my belief that the real value in focus groups lies in :

• first recognising the dynamics between participants, and facilitating them to a certain goal, which can make or break a focus group.  it is these dynamics that can generate ideas and provide insights into perceptions and reactions
  
• scratching the surface and looking deeper under, not just at what is being said - but how it is said, in what context, with how much conviction.  This can only come from recognising the intonations, gestures and body language that accompanies the spoken word 


• recognising and embracing silence and contradictions and using them appropriately 


• facilitating, perceiving and acknowledging connections where none exist overtly


• getting respondents to talk to each other and not just to the moderator to reduce potential for the "wheel effect" where the moderator becomes the hub of conversation

When these dynamics are missing as danah describes, does it really make sense to run a focus group in an environment that does not allow much of this to happen ? Focus groups are social settings - remove the 'social' from the setting and it loses value.  Interviews may well have done the job in danah's case.

Here's a useful summary of process in conducting online focus groups. And a whitepaper on designing and conducting virtual focus groups.  These papers and danah's experience makes me think that while there are many benefits of conducting online focus groups, a sense of presence is really not being recognised as a critical factor in fostering the social setting that is the basic tenet of a focus group which makes it different from one-on-one interviews.  In most cases, it is absent.  

"The richer the communications channels, the more natural the interaction appears among group members. The idea is to simulate as closely as possible the level of interaction that occurs in face-to-face communications" [George Chin Jr.]

Some suggestions for conducting online focus groups with a better sense of presence, using tools that are easily accessible.  With the assumption that respondents are made comfortable with the tools and implementation and use is easy.  

• choose an environment that allows uplinking of a photo to put a face to the person - i am not sure avataars will do here :)


• enable voice - this may lead to further chaos in some cases - with artful facilitation i suspect this could be well moderated


• if you have the budget and the bandwidth consider video-conferencing along with a chat window


• encourage the use of emoticons to describe how respondents are feeling or any other form of indicating boredom, fatigue, the sudden lighting up of eyes at a thought, withdrawal, confusion, affirmation, etc.  There could be a business here :):):) - moodboards made digital ?


• if you have the time it may well be worth setting up a blog or wiki for the subject at hand - where respondents "çheck in" and interactions are encouraged both before and after the focus group - i have often felt that i wish i could go back to respondents the next day and ask them to tell me if they had reflected on the group discussion and would they like to add anything fresh or more to it

Are there any other suggestions you could think of to enhance a sense of presence and the social setting in the conduct of online or virtual focus groups ?

4:26:16 PM    comment []  trackback []