Statistics.gov.scot improvement project: discovery user research report

Appendix B – Focus group session outline

Focus group outline (2 hours)

Why are we doing this? To plan for any improvements, we need to think about common experiences of the site – you (users) are the best people to tell us what works and what doesn’t, so we want to understand your needs, experiences, and ideas.

1. Introduction (10 minutes)

• Welcome and icebreaker (5 mins): Introduce yourself and tell us something you’re not great with that you’d like to get good at (I have a very long list…bowling, roller-skating, being quiet…)
• Overview of the session (5 mins): Explain the rationale for the research, what we’re going to be discussing and doing in the focus group and why.

2. Initial impressions (20 mins)

• First impressions (10 mins): [depending on experience with site] E.g.
  • Have you heard of the site?
  • What brings you to the research session?
  • What is/was your first impression?
• Expectations v reality (10 mins):
  • What did/do you expect to be able to do on this site?
  • How would you expect to do that?
  • (If site is already known) - What are you using the site for?
  • (if site is already known) - Can you do that?

3. User needs and experiences (30 mins)

• User journey mapping (15 mins, groups of 2-3): We provide scenarios and tasks appropriate to the participants’ experience. Each group lists the steps they’d take in that scenario to accomplish the task, and notes where they encounter issues.
• Present and discuss (15 mins): Each group shares the journey. Together we can discuss commonalities and pain points.

[BREAK: 5-10 mins]

4. Exploration of similar services (30 mins)

• Intro and link share (5 mins): Show ONS and Ireland’s Open Data Portal.
• Find datasets (15 mins): task is just to find relevant data for two example scenarios – how did you find it?
• Discuss (10 mins): What do you [participants] like about these services? Does anything look particularly inviting? What don’t you like? How do these services compare to the statistics.gov.scot website? Are there any other services you use, with particular features you like?

5. Discussion (20 mins)

Questions:

• What features or information do you find most valuable on the websites we’ve looked at?
• Are there tasks you want to perform on these sites that we haven’t talked about?
• What changes to statistics.gov.scot might improve your experience?
• Are there specific areas where you feel statistics.gov.scot is lacking compared to others we’ve looked at?
• In an ideal world, what would you want to be able to do on statistics.gov.scot?
• Are there any ways in which you might use this personally or professionally?

6. Thanks, next steps (5 mins)

Thanks all, here’s what we did today and here’s what’s next.