Never used a focus group

Where were you when you learned of Steve Jobs's death?  For many, geeks and non-geeks, it will be an eventful day to remember.   Jobs gave us many lessons in life to learn that were broadcast on the Internet, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.  As an educational researcher one comment about his business practices hit home and made me reflect on this for many days.  I even brought up the subject in my Second Life class for The Science Circle on People's Perception of Science. 

Steve Jobs never did a focus group on his products.

For us, focus groups are the basis of everything we do.  And, maybe that is wrong.  Years ago, while working on a project to develop an online textbook, we knew that minority and lower socioeconomic students were less likely to have a computer or Internet access at home.  Therefore we assumed they would be less able to use computers. Yet our observations of students proved that we could not assume the comfort level of students by ethnicity or economic background.  After that we learned the question to ask a student to discover if they were computer comfortable and proficient was not, "Do you have a computer at home?" but "Do you have an email account and how many times a day do you check it?"  Home computer or not, students were on computers a couple times a day.

But what questions could Steve Jobs have asked as he developed his innovative computers?  "Would you buy a computer that looked like a bean and came in bright colors, had no floppy drive, and made you look like a sissy and not a computer geek?"  "Would you buy a laptop computer that looked like a clam shell and had a handle so you could lug it around everywhere?"  "Would you buy a thing that you could put in your shirt pocket and download music from a website?"  "Would you buy a phone that cost $600 and then happily buy accessories for it?"  "Would you buy a computer that didn't negotiate on price and was significantly more than any other computer?"

Thank heaven for all of us Steve never asked those questions.

Now, as educational researchers we have to seriously sit down and think about our use of focus groups and their impact on business and educational decisions.

Oh, BTW to focus group users, if we were to ask students today how many times they used email we would get a surprise.  Not many students use it.  Social media is where they are; not email.  The lesson that Steve Jobs taught us was not what are you using, but what types of things do you want technology to do. 

While you are at it, watch this video of Steve Jobs's address to Stanford graduates.