Colts Interns form focus group, provide insight

Posted May 31st, 2007 by Pat Coyle • 2 Comments

Every summer we get bunches of interns to help us with various marketing and sales related projects. I decided to shanghai all of them into a focus group for mycolts. I figured these guys must be heavy social net users, so they might be able to provide valuable feedback on our site while it’s still in beta.

Focus groups are not the best research tools, and they present plenty of challenges, but here are a few things I found very interesting:

1. Every single one of them makes a point to watch NFL every Sunday whether they’re at school or back at home. In this case, most all list Colts as their favorite team

2. All these kids have cell phone, and most talk to their parents severa times each week, but interestingly, all of them call home every week just to talk about the Colts game. I continue to believe that the nuclear family plays a pivotal role in nfl fandom, and hope we can tap into that emotional connection online. Still, mom and dad never get to see their facebook pages. So how do we bring the students and parents together online? That may take another generation or two

3. Out of a dozen interns, all but one is a heavy social net user. All 11 choose Facebook. Only one maintains a Myspace account in addition to his Facebook account. This didn’t surprise us, but it’s pretty striking and might be something MySpace should be concerned about.

4. Privacy and “stalking” are the biggest concerns – especially among the young women. We anticipated this issue, which is why we created our “friendlist” tool. But we realize from this group’s input that we need to do a better job showing what friendlist can do.

5. NONE of them had EVER created a video and posted it to the Web. The look at YouTube videos every once in a while “when they’re bored”. This confirms what we’ve been thinking…video can wait.

6. Most of these kids check out lots of sports site (like ESPN.com), but only a couple of these students ever looks at forums, which is one of the most popular sections on colts.com. Seems there are very distinct user groups out there, and we can’t count on our forum users to gravitate into social networking or vice versa.

7. The students used terms like “addicted” when describing why they use Facebook. At some level, these kids realize that social pressures are compelling them to participate and they like it and resent it at the same time. Kinda like the “crack berry” for us 40-somethings, I suppose.

One of the interns missed the meeting, but sent me this note, which I thing sums up the session quite well:

Overall, I really like the site. The idea is very forward thinking and an innovative way to reach out farther to Colts fans. I know I have enjoyed the comparable facebook website very much.

One thing that was cool, was the “Color, Background, Template” tab in the profile options. The personalization this gives to each individual person is awesome. (something that facebook lacks) This options was very easy to use with the description given to what each color option would change.

There were, however, I couple things I was unsure about. At times the sight feels like a matchmaking sight. In the profile editing section, the appearance and lifestyle options seem very personal. I know that everyone has the option of whether or not to fill these out, but I don’t feel the option needs to be there. If someone is concerned with physical characteristics then view posted photos. In the people search, the “between the ages”, “relationship status”, “smoker”, “drinker”, and “religion” options are questions I would have about my next girlfriend, and not about fellow Colt fans. I think these issues leave me feeling we are trying to attract unmarried, 20-35 year olds, instead of keeping it family friendly.

Another issue that struck me, was the sexual orientation option in the Lifestyle section. I do not see this as being necessary and could see it possibly causing trouble. Lets say using the “report” option, where a user can report anything he finds offensive, if a gay/lesbian was reported and dropped from the sight by our tech guys, could there be possible legal issues with this? The sexual orientation of a user just does not seem important.

Besides the matchmaking feeling of the sight, another suggestion I have comes from your personal frontpage/dashboard. Under where your profile is, there is the link to “Order Friends.” The word order seems like I am going to forcefully do something. Maybe a word switch to arrange or organize is more what I was expecting for that option.

One more little note, when you are given your first password through e-mail so you can initially log onto the sight, the password that I received was: /b&$JV!sm2

This password was slightly complicated to type in with characters /,&,$, and !. The first website I have been to that uses characters in these new password situations. I wasn’t sure if this was for security reasons or the way it was just set up in the program, but it was confusing when I first saw it. I actually had to type it in 3 times to get it correct.

I hope these comments/suggestions help. I realize most of them are negative but I really do think the sight has the potential to be a big addition to the Colts reaching more fans.

One more thing I forgot. One possible addition was a Colts experience section. I saw how there was a rating section for people. Maybe have a section where users can write down a recent Colts experience, give users the ability to search “New Colts Experiences” or “My Friends Recent Colts Experiences” and then let these experiences be rated. Just a suggestion.

After the focus group, we met as a development team to go over the session. It’s tough to hear criticism of something you’ve designed, and it’s even tougher to think you might need to change what you’ve built based on user input. It’s easy to shrug off user comments and just keep doing what you believe should be done. And clearly this is just one group, and one demographic sector. Other people will have various other opinions. It’s impossible to please all of the people all of the time. So we are challenged to choose a direction and make the changes we feel necessary to make the site as good as it can be. Personally, I am challenged to be the “objective” ear and at times insist on changes based on user needs, even if the design team disagrees. That’s the point I’ve come to this morning.