Mavera DocsWalkthrough: run a focus group
From picking an audience to reading the room — every step.
Run a focus group
Choose Focus Group, select the audience, write tension, run, and read the room.
Choose Talk from the sidebar.
Good afternoon
Choose a surface from the sidebar to begin.
- 1Open TalkChoose Talk from the sidebar.
- 2Choose a formatSelect chat, focus group, deep interview, or debate.
- 3Choose the roomPick a named audience for the conversation.
- 4Give the room tensionWrite a focused, arguable topic rather than a vague prompt.
- 5Run the conversationStart the local simulation.
- 6Read the roomOpen the transcript, themes, and disagreement panel.
A focus group gives you the discussion — where a group agrees, where it splits, who changes their mind. Here's the full path.
Go to Talk
Left sidebar → Advanced tools → Talk. You'll see conversation cards: Chat, Focus Group, Deep Interview, Debate, and more.
Pick Focus Group
Click the Focus Group card. A form opens on the right.
Choose your audience from the dropdown
Click the Audience dropdown. Your workspace's audiences are listed by name — hover any one to see exactly who they are. Pick the one that matches who you need to hear from.
No audience yet? Two options:
- Quick: leave it and use Audience Builder first (a sentence is enough).
- Quicker: go back to Mave and type "run a focus group with [describe people] about [topic]" — she builds the audience on the way.
Give it a topic — make it arguable
Weak topic: "our new product" (too vague, polite consensus). Strong topic: "Would you actually pay $15/month for this, and what would make you cancel?" (forces trade-offs).
Panel size 4–6 is the sweet spot: enough voices to disagree, few enough to follow.
Run it and read the three panels
When it finishes you get:
| Panel | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Transcript | Who said what, in order, in each voice |
| Convergence | The things the whole room agreed on — your safest claims |
| Polarizing points | Where the room split — your risk areas and segmentation clues |
There's also a shifts list: anyone who changed their mind mid-discussion, and what moved them. That's persuasion gold — the argument that moved a synthetic skeptic is a candidate for your ad copy.