Focus Group Analysis

In order to find out more about my Target Audience, to find out what are their opinions about my media product I did a focus group.
I used three girls quite the same age rage, making sure they could be a part of my target audience. (in other words I made sure they are representative sample taken out of the whole Target Audience Population.

The first question I asked all of them was 'What do you like doing in your free time?'

Just to make sure they all enjoy quite the same things and also to make sure they have what to talk about to start with. (This gave me the opportunity to make the impression of 'friend to friend' chat) The answers I got was going to gigs or festivals, hanging out with friends, listening to music, having 'active' lifestyle. Which proved that my sample is representative as it matches my T.A profile hobbies. 

Then I showed them my front cover image : 

 

And asked them to identify genre of the magazine and to tell me what makes them believe it.

All three my respondents identified genre correctly, they said they can see it through the colours used also the masthead, writing and the main character (headphones, attractiveness, etc)

Focus group was very happy about the grey font colour instead of white. They said 'White became boring, on every single magazine front cover whereas grey looks more playful, more dragging attention. The same with the use of dark blue colour font. Very rarely you see the magazine which uses the dark blue font. But it is well-played as it matches the main character's shirt.'

Also focus group participants said that most of the topics on the front cover works well for electronic dance music magazine. Unique masthead which is behind main character's head, which means all the attention is allocated at the main character.

Afterwards I showed my focus group a picture of my contents page (still a draft version)

The biggest concern from focus group when it comes to my contents page was about using words and number ON the pictures, instead of next to it, but I was recommended earlier to move it on images as it is hard to understand which image goes with which text bit.

Focus group liked the use of colours as they said it matches the front cover.
I asked 'Can you tell me if this is the same magazine and why?'

Mostly mentioned answers were use of colour, use of font, the same character, the same name of the magazine (at the bottom)

The third bit I showed was my double page spread :

(left side)

(right side)

I am worried about the light blue quote in the middle of the text, as the text does not wrap around (if it does - it just looks not right, the whole text stretched out through lines. So I asked my focus group opinions about it.

'This version of the quote in the middle doesn't look bad, it just looks a bit untidy. I would prefer to see more black from the right side of the quote' said one of the focus group members.

That was the most important question for me. The other questions was about questions and how well does that stand out of the whole text, is it not the 'anti-modern' way to drag attention to the text using underline tool. 

Girls were positive about using this tool they said it worked very well knowing the whole genre of the magazine. 

All the students used were non-media students which made sure they are not looking for 'conventions' or anything that media students would pay attention at first. Also all the work was shown digitally which made sure my participants do not have to look at two separate pages stretched out like now on this blog, they've seen the actual way it looks. Also I had couple of drafts on paper, but that was old drafts just for comparison between my old 'dps' and the current one to see my participants opinions about it. 

Overall I got the idea that I am doing the right thing as anything that my participants had to compare seemed that the they liked the new work much more than the old one.