Focus Group

So this week was the week for us to do our focus group to find out how viewers interact with multi platform programmes and what they gain from this experience. 

After all doing our own individual research on two shows each, we decided as a group that the 3 most successful multi platform programmes are The X Factor, Embarrassing Bodies and Million Pound Drop. We wanted to do 3 shows from 3 different genres so we could show the contrast between them. I felt like this was a really good idea because it demonstrates that multi platform isn't genre specific and by exploring different genres we are covering a wider range of television. 

We asked our Focus group to firstly play on the apps of either The Million Pound Drop, Embarassing Bodies or X Factor. However we also added in the Deal Or No Deal App on the day because we had failed to predownload The X Factor App. If we were to do it again, we would be more organised. Participants were then asked to order a list of emotions in the order they had felt them, such as happy, excited, tense, angry. All individuals then filled in a postcard, explaining what their favourite app was and then to recommend it to someone and a device to use it on. This allowed for us to get quantitative results meaning that we could easily analyse them and use them as research towards answering our question. 

We found that our focus group preferred to play the Million Pound Drop as they said it was engaging and visually pleasing. They preferred to play it on a touch screen device as they found it easier to transfer their money across. However our focus group quickly grew bored of the Embarassing Bodies App showing that it is more well suited for informative purposes and offers no entertainment value showing us that fans will spend more time on game show apps than factual show apps. Our focus group also enjoyed the Deal Or No Deal App as they enjoyed conversing with each other to discuss what to do next showing that this works better as a social activity. 

I felt that it was really important to do a focus group as it allowed us to find out what people thought of our apps in a controlled and hands on way. If I was going to do it again I would make the activity less complicated as sometimes participants were confused.