A way to gather qualitative research about users or customers by gathering them in a group, physically or virtually, and asking guided questions or exercises; learn more about behaviors, values, beliefs, desires or reactions to concepts; in recruiting, often preferable to have multiple, varied, homogeneous groups to encourage free discussion and then compare results across groups; focus groups are small by nature and can gather more in-depth information than a questionnaire or other methods; data is not always representative across all users or customers, unless well-designed with variety of users or customers, or desired users/customers