Online Focus Groups: Ning “How-To”
A Primarily Asynchronous Environment
March 29, 2012
Research Team: Mary Anne Casey, Sally Dinsmore, David Ernst, Jim Hatten, Richard Krueger, Michael Lee, Caryn Lindsay, Alison Link, Nance Longley, Mary Catherine O’Brien, Patrick O’Leary, Alfonso Sintjago
Overview
Ning is a versatile online platform used by educators, businesses, entertainment industries and other companies to hosting online communities and groups for synchronous and asynchronous communications. Ning’s most popular features are its forum tool, inbox, photos, member profiles, blog, and videos. However, many of these bells and whistles are not essential and can be distracting when setting up an effective Ning focus group environment. Through this guide we share how we decided, after a few iterations, how best to set up the layout of our Ning site and how you would be able to reproduce this organizational structure.
Ning provides an interface that is powerful and attractive. Striking an appropriate balance between features and a user-friendly design can diminish user response problems as they will able to navigate the site and respond to the questions without unnecessary complications. Ning allows for discussions to be threaded and for users to share pictures, videos, and other files with other participants. Unlike other options, Ning was also a very economical alternative. Below is a list of additional features which were important in our decision to select a Ning site over other products:
Website: http://www.ning.com
Price:
Key Advantages:
– Has a threaded asynchronous forum
– Includes a robust chat system
– Is very affordable
– Works well with low Internet speeds
– Has an attractive interface
– Can be very user-friendly
– The data can be easily extracted
Important Considerations
– Rigorously test the site before conducting the focus groups.
– Every discussion topic should take one or more days.
– 2 moderators are needed (excluding technical support).
– A technical support staff member is highly recommended.
– Simplify the site and user experience as much as possible.
Step-by-Step Guide – Setting up a Ning Site
When deciding on platforms there are various factors to consider. A site needs to provide for certain functionalities that facilitate a continuous discussion as well as be user friendly and appealing so that users with different technology utilization levels feel welcome and are not confused by additional bells and whistles. We felt that by removing various features from a standard Ning layout we would be able to maximize the utility of the site. We hope you also find this guide helpful and user-friendly. First, this guide will show step-by-step how, as administrators, we designed the site and limited the options available for users.
FROM THE ADMINSTRATOR’S VIEWPOINT
When accessing a Ning site as an administrator you will have access to a number of additional options that are not available to site users without administrative functionalities. One of the additional tabs available for administrators is the “Manage” tab at the top of the screen. As an administrator, first click on the “manage” tab and then click on “profile questions”.
To simplify the initial access to the site as much as possible, we recommend that you limit the number of “profile questions” you ask participants when they are creating an account. You can ask various types and numbers of questions to participants (private and public questions) when they are first creating the account. You can customize these settings by accessing “profile questions”.
While it may be helpful, depending on the focus group, to learn various details about participants, we recommend that you try to avoid complicating the site for users, especially in the beginning of the focus group, in order to reduce the participant dropout rate. In our test study, we asked users only to upload a photo (Answer Type: Photo). We also chose to use pictures of animals to increase anonymity. There may be advantages and disadvantages from not using real names and personal pictures which will vary depending on the nature of the focus group audience and objectives.
Recruiting participants for any focus group can be difficult. We recommend that you apply a similarly cautious approach when ensuring that participants will remember to attend the day of the study. It is easier to drop off and disconnect from a distance. Personalize your “invitation” and the email sent to them when possible. When inviting participants you can send them an email by sharing the “share this invite link” or enter their “emails addresses manually”. We crafted a personalized invitation email that detailed various aspects of the focus group. It may be helpful to include a concise, personal, and well-designed introductory video to guide the participant through the initial process.
Because of “privacy” and anonymity concerns, we decided to set our Ning site to “private”. By setting the Ning site to “private” we can prevent random individuals from requesting access to the site and being able to see the content of the site without the permission of the administrators. Because of confidentiality requests, we suggest that only the participants invited be given temporary access to the site throughout the duration of the focus group.
In terms of “appearance” we decided to keep the platform as simplified as possible to avoid user confusion. We only used one line of customized CSS code to remove the user information box #xg_module_account { display:none;}. We used “Layout B1” and colors we found both simple and attractive. It is highly recommended that the developers test the site to make sure it is simple to use before the data collection.
For the “features layout” we utilized emphasized simplicity. We employed two “text boxes” which contained the orientation and site instructions information. We used the “forum” tool to collect responses, the text box underneath to include FAQ data, and the “members” box so that participants could change their profile image. We also enabled the “chat” function so that we could provide technical support and answer questions to participants in real time. They were also encouraged to email us if they were having technical difficulties. To add these features to the Ning site they must be dragged from the icons to the left side of the screen to the section where you think the added feature would fit most adequately.
When dragging tools into the layout, we decided to place them in the bottom box to the right of the screen. By being on the bottom box, rather than the top box (under the “username” box), the boxes would only show within the home page or “Focus Groups 5095” tab instead of showing to the right side of the screen when opening the other available tabs.
We renamed the “tabs and pages” we created to diminish confusion. For example instead of the “forum” box being called forum we changed it to discussion forum. The main sections of the site were “Discussion Forum”, where participants discussed and answered questions asynchronously, the “Chat Room” where we held a synchronous chat section, and “Focus Group 5095” which served as a main page with basic information.
In a previous version of the site we also used the “A Small Treat(s)” section to distribute a small participation incentive, and the “Exploring New Tools” tab as an additional discussion area. The other tabs visible in the image above were not visible to the participants of our second Ning focus group. They contained data from a previous exercise that we were still analyzing. You can change the visibility settings of a tab by changing the “Make Visible To” to members only.
When deciding what site “features” to utilize, within the “forum” tab we opted to use the “forum” tool instead of the “text” box tool for discussion because of its unique “threaded” function. Activating this feature, instead of using a “flat” discussion style, allowed participants to direct their responses directly to other participants’ answers instead of only being able to answer the main question or being unable to tell who the latest response is directed towards. We also decided to limit the “categories” by changing the settings so that only administrators could “start discussions”.
To change the features of the text editor we selected the “text editor” tab. To increase the flexibility for participants to express themselves we allowed responses to use the “WYSIWYG” view instead of an “HTML” view which limited participants to making various modifications only by writing the HTML code. A WYSIWYG editor edits all the code for you in the background while you add images, emoticons, and other elements that would only be easy to add to web-editors if using the HTML view instead.
Those were all of the features we used within our Ning site. While some of the advanced tools, available through places like the “Ning Labs” were appealing to us, we decided against using these and other advanced features to reduce user-frustration and confusion when using the site. We disabled the ability for participants to share their responses via Facebook and Twitter.
FROM THE USER’S VIEWPOINT
A user’s first interaction with the Ning site will be through their email account, where they will receive a link asking them to sign up and join the network to participate in the focus group online. While there are ways to pre-develop accounts so that users do not have to register themselves, this can be time consuming. However, we asked participants only to provide us with very basic information when responding to the initial invitation email and registering on the Ning site.
When creating an account we asked participants to create a username, a password, and to upload a picture of an animal out of a number of images of animals that we had included within their email invitation. This process is illustrated in the images above.
Unlike the administrator view, participants in our second focus group only had access to the 3 main pages that we mentioned previously, they were not able to access the “manage” tab and change any of the site settings. The screenshot above displays what participants would have access using our focus group format.
The “discussion forum” tab included the current “featured” discussions at the top part of the screen and all of the other discussions (in our case the ones we were no longer featuring) at the bottom. Within a “discussion forum” an administrator can create an unspecified number of discussion boards. Discussions were not visible to participants until the day they were scheduled to be public.
As an administrator, by clicking on “options” you could decide which discussion boards to “feature” and which ones not to “feature”. Discussions could be “closed” (within “options”) to participants after a set timeframe. We summarized the discussions at the end of each day but some participants commented the day after. The discussion board could be “closed” after summarizing or at a later time.
When responding, participants were able to respond directly to the main question of the day by filling the “reply to this” box right after reading the question without reading other participants’ responses. However, participants were encouraged to scroll and read others’ responses before responding and also encouraged to comment on others’ responses.
Threading allowed for participants to respond to one another directly. This helped to frame a communication flow, which is one of the key strengths of conducting a focus group. The moderator, in this case (visible in the last post – “Alfonso Sintjago”) primarily ensured that participants further elaborated on their responses and highlighted the value of their responses during the discussion. Unlike a face-to-face focus group where silence may be perceived as awkward and will encourage participants to possibly talk after a few seconds or cue the moderator to move to the next question, a more active role may be required when moderating online if participants seem to be disengaging to prevent them from dropping out of the discussion.
Before the next discussion was started by the moderator (usually the following day but time-frames can vary), he or she would provide a very brief summary of the previous responses. This brings a conclusion to the discussion as well as allowing for member checking, ensuring that responses have not been misinterpreted and the key ideas have been extracted.
In our site, we used the “chat” box for synchronous discussions. Participants were reminded that the chat would start at a particular time and to click on the “chat room” tab instead of chatting via the bar that remains at the bottom of the screen as long as one is browsing through the site. To ensure that all voices were heard, during the synchronous chat room we set basic communication rules so that the chat room would not overly benefit faster typists. Our most effective rule was to request that if a name was mentioned by the moderator, that everyone else waits until the person the moderator called for responded. Accidentally erasing the content of the synchronous chat room can happen. Please copy the content to a text editor as soon as the discussion is finished.
By clicking on a member’s image within the “member” box, participants could enter their profile page. We discouraged the use of the member page and of the blogging features of the site so that users would not respond in the wrong areas and get confused when navigating the website. Aside from changing their user image or using the “send a message” tool to contact the moderators, we discouraged the use of this area from the time that participants first logged onto the site.
As soon as participants first logged in, we posted a brief message on their profile page and redirected them to the “Focus Group 5095” tab. After leaving the user page, we directed them to the main page so that they could read the focus group “instructions”.
In their profile, by hovering over the top of their profile image they could select to change their picture by clicking “change photo”. When clicking “change photo” participants are taken to a profile “my settings” page where they could change their image as well as their name to increase their anonymity if they desired to do so.
Thank you for your time. These are the practices that we found most useful when setting up a Ning site for asynchronous focus group discussions. While there are other asynchronous tools available, we believe that Ning provides the degree of user friendliness, features, and visual appeal that will facilitate participant engagement and focus group success. However, there are many more elements to consider when conducting an online focus group, and the success of the initiative will depend on the interaction of all of the pieces. We hope you found this guide useful.
(Image illustrating the responses obtained within a section of our Focus Group on Focus Groups experiment)
