Questions people ask
Most of them come down to one thing: can you trust research where the participants are synthetic? Here is the honest answer, plus the practical stuff.
Choosing a format
When do I want a focus group instead of a survey?
Reach for a focus group when you need to understand a decision: why people lean toward one option, what would change their mind, where the room splits. Reach for a survey when you need a number you can defend in a meeting, broken out by age or region or income. A focus group goes deep on a handful of people; a survey goes wide across hundreds.
How many participants should I use?
A focus group runs from 12 to 30. Smaller keeps it intimate and fast; larger gives more angles. A survey runs from 100 to 500, and more is steadier. If you go too small on a survey, we will tell you the margin of error is too wide rather than pretend the number is solid.
Can I compare more than one product?
Yes. A focus group is built around comparing up to three at once, usually your product against two competitors. A survey can cover up to ten.
Trusting the results
The participants are synthetic. Why would I believe any of it?
Fair question. The honest answer is that the output is grounded by a few habits: findings cite the exact responses behind them so you can read the words yourself, numbers ship with a margin of error and a thin sample is flagged, and where a public benchmark exists the same brief gets run and shown side by side. It is not a crystal ball. It is a fast first read that is right often enough to be worth having before you commit real money.
How do you turn a conversation into a score?
Each answer is read and placed on a one-to-five scale, but not by any single shortcut. Three things go into the placement: what the words mean, how spread out the room is, and whether the rating fits the kind of reviewer the person is. The average then carries an estimated range, so a thin or split sample shows up as a wide band instead of a misleading midpoint.
Can I trace a finding back to who said it?
Always. Open any study and each theme, gap, and recommendation lists the responses behind it. Nothing in the read-out floats free of the transcript.
Running a study
How long does it take?
About twenty minutes from brief to read-out for a typical study. Bigger panels take a little longer.
If I run the same study twice, do I get the same answer?
Yes. Each saved study keeps the same setup, so a repeat run can reproduce the result. That lets you change one thing about the product and compare before and after without chasing noise.
What if something goes wrong mid-study?
Each step checks itself. If a step comes back thin or off, it gets told what was wrong and retries, up to twice. If it still cannot pass, the study stops and tells you why instead of handing you a polished report built on a broken step.
Cost
What does a study cost?
You spend credits, and the cost scales with how big the panel is and how deep the conversation goes. A small focus group is cheaper than a large survey. Add credits before running a study.
Do I need to connect anything before starting?
No. Everything runs on our side. You sign in and start.