Focus Group

Tonight I was part of a focus group for one of those opinion poll places. It consisted of six men with an English woman named Sarah as facilitator. The topic was diamond jewelry. They qualified the members of the group by trying to find men who had been married for a certain length of time, who were somewhat creative and who had either recently given or planned to give diamond jewelry to their wives in the near future. It was interesting to meet some new people and talk about ideas like surprising our wives with presents, and the meaning of romance.

We had a homework assignment to do before we came in tonight. We had to make a one page collage describing our relationship with our wives. If yours was judged the best, you got an extra $50. My collage was a picture of a stream winding through the woods (because you never know what's around the bend), surrounded by the frame of a puzzle (because women are puzzling), with an image of the internal structure of a conch shell (representing the way we balance each other). They wanted you to use different textures and such, so I made my stream a river of denim. Surprisingly, I didn't win. The guy who did win drew a stock market chart of ups and downs with Hershey's kisses marking the peaks and valleys. It was a good idea.

The discussion was rolling along when it came to a grinding halt as Sarah proposed a new jewelry design to us: two disparate metals joined with a diamond in the center. Only one person thought it might work. The rest of us thought it was a dumb idea, but she kept pressing.

I thought Sarah had an interesting job, though she did have to work at night. She kept prodding us with questions, carefully summarizing what we had said, probing for more information--everything a good facilitator should do to our credit, we were a good group, where just about everyone participated without much prompting.