Little Experts, Big Insights: What 30+ years of work with Kids, Tweens and Teens has taught us.
When kids, tweens and teens are your target audience, we have a variety of ways of engaging with them, from focus groups to stimulus panels to ideation sessions. Kids and teens can add a lot of insight and creativity to any research, opportunity exploration, or ideation. Even when the parent is the purchaser, it’s helpful to get the inside scoop from the kids.
Here are a few ways in which we engage with kids, tweens and teens at ITG.
Focus Groups: 8 Guidelines that Keep the Chaos Productive
Let’s start with a picture of a recent experience with some focus groups with 6-8 year olds. During this process, I found myself realizing that I had to split my brain in 2 to be effective:
One part to run the group, ask questions, listen to their responses.
The other part to handle the chaos.
What chaos you ask?
“Can I get a drink of water?”
“Can I have a tissue?”
“Can I use the bathroom?”
“I dropped my pencil.”
“I need a different pencil.”
“He’s kicking my chair.”
“What did you have for lunch today, Beth?”
“I want to talk to my Mom.”
“How do you spell banana?”
And my favorite: Random story or anecdote that has nothing to do with what I just asked you.
Managing Focus Groups with Kids
All that said, there are lots of things that we do to manage a process when kids are involved to get the most out of them. And this is true whether or not you are dealing with the very young ones. Many of these practices apply to older kids as well.
Swap out any spinning chairs with static chairs. Even with chairs that don’t move, the little ones have a hard time staying seated, but ensuring that the chairs can’t spin is key!
Give them something to touch or taste. This breaks up the monotony of just talking. With a great recruit, it can be surprising how articulate even some of the young ones are but just talking for an hour or more can be taxing, especially for a kid who had school earlier that day. So, any chance to get tactile is helpful.
Get them up and moving. Similar to #2, and related to #1, sitting still can be a challenge to say the least. So if there’s a chance to get them out of their seats (albeit briefly), even if it’s to help pass out samples, is a plus.
Give them a creative outlet. Ask them what they would do to make something better, ask them what name they would give to the product, give them something to draw related to the topic. It lets them know that you are interested in their creative input and gives them something to do besides just talk.
Don’t let them have any sugar. I cannot stress this enough. For adult focus groups, it’s ok to let the facility provide cookies and candy and soda in the lobby. For kids, only provide water and, if needed, wholesome non-sugary snacks. If a kid gets too sugared up and disruptive, it’s not like you can tell them “they have a phone call.”
Send them to the rest room immediately after arriving and signing in (especially the young ones). This works about 50% of the time to avoid disruptions and downtime due to bathroom breaks. However, sometimes it can’t be helped, and once one wants to go, the others tend to follow. I just do my best to keep it to one at a time.
Make sure they acknowledge the mirror and who/what’s behind it. Tell them who’s back there (broadly) and let them wave and say hi. That usually gets it out of their system. Oh, and don’t forget to make sure the blinds are down in the back room so they can’t see the shadows of anyone moving around…
Reassure them their parents are NOT behind the mirror. This one is important because if they think their parents are back there, they may give you different answers (aka the ones they think their parents want to hear).
Stimulus Panels: How to let Kids’ Lives Lead the Way
Another way we engage kids in the process is by having them participate in a stimulus panel. This is a group discussion led by an ITG Facilitator that differs from a focus group in that we are not digging to unearth insights or get their reactions to product ideas, but instead we are looking to find inspiration from them through the lens of their life.
These sessions can be held in person or online. In person is great for obvious reasons:
The kids can interact with one another.
It’s quicker to build rapport.
You get a real feel for their personalities and what’s going on in their lives by seeing them up close and personal.
But online sessions have benefits as well:
Timing can be easier to manage on school days.
They have access to their personal belongings for show and tell.
You can easily bring kids from different parts of the country together.
Have them Complete Prep Work
For these types of sessions, we typically have the kids or teens do a homework assignment in advance that helps provide a glimpse into their life and what they think is important or cool. Depending on their age and on the topic, we might ask them to:
Pick a brand that they think is cool or represents their personality. Talk about it and why they choose it.
Choose 3 go-to snacks or meals that they love. Talk about why they love them, where, when and with whom they are eating them.
Describe and show a game or activity that they love to do. Tell us about it, what’s great about it, and who are they with, if anyone.
Create a drawing that represents how they feel on a typical day and describe it.
Describe their ideal family vacation. Where are they, whose going, what are they doing, how much togetherness is there.
Write a short story about their best day at school. When was it, what happened, why was it important.
Choose an activity to do with your best friend and answer a few questions immediately before and immediately after completing the activity.
These are just examples, but the goal is for the client team to uncover a-has and opportunities for their brand to do a better job of reaching these kids in ways that speak to them and their needs, wants and desires. Following the panel, we’ll work with the client team by leading a debrief and capturing a series of “How Might We” statements to help frame up future opportunities and next steps in the process. One of those next steps is typically an ideation session with more kids and/or with parents who are our Creative Consumers® associates.
Ideation: How to Turn a Kid’s Idea into a Real Product Concept
Just like when working with adults, prior to any ideation session, we prepare the kids or teens by teaching them the mindset for creativity: Forness® thinking. They understand it pretty quickly and seem to love it, usually because the practice examples are ridiculous like Bouncy House, an actual house made of inflatable material, or Suddenly Bears, an exhibit in the zoo where bears suddenly appear unexpectedly, wandering among the guests.
They also complete a homework assignment to get them immersed in the topic, so we can get them to articulate their wishes. Some of the homework may look similar to some of the activities we do during a stimulus panel, because the goal is the same, to uncover opportunities for the brand based on the kids’ mindset.
When working with teens, an ideation session can be run very similarly to the way we do it with adult Creative Consumers® associates. Facilitators introduce a creative “excursion” or activity that the teens complete, and they work together in pairs to generate product ideas. At times, depending on the topic, we bring the client team into the mix to do some co-creating with the teens.
When working with kids, we run shorter sessions, and sometimes bring in CCs who are parents (not the parents of those kids) to do some paired exercises with the kids to help them articulate their ideas and bring them to life.
Regardless of whether it’s kids or teens, it’s helpful to incorporate activities such as drawing, getting them up on their feet, using arts and crafts to create prototypes, etc.
And, yes, it’s an adventure. A worthwhile effort to get those first-hand insights and experiences into the mix. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!