As an engineer, what is your experience with using focus groups?

(I know this is a little late, but hopefully it helps others stumbling across this in the future) Good question Michael. I just got out of my first experience doing a Voice of the Customer (VoC) and it was an interesting time. It takes a lot of work to get the information to present ready and cleaned of any bias before entering one of these. You will want to make sure you start as general as possible to see what you can fish out from the open minds of your potential clients. Start getting more specific at the end and make sure to ask any questions directly to drive your product specifications. Also, if you are doing group interviews be careful to listen for subordinates parroting their managers. A lot of good information comes from the people who actually use your devices, much more than the people removed from the process.