As in having a really great idea. A bulletin-board style, threaded discussion that runs over 3 to 5 days provides an effective online environment, both for stimulating creativity and for evaluating concepts in depth. Real-time online focus groups are a great way to quickly and economically solicit respondent input. Responses tend to be brief, however, because of the 90-minute format. And, it is generally recommended that the size of real-time, online groups be limited to 6 to 8 respondents.
Respondents check into the forum several times a day over the course of a number of days.
The moderator posts new questions to the forum each day. Visual stimuli can also be uploaded to the site for respondent evaluation. This approach typically leads to a transcript of 100 pages or more, full of rich material for insight mining. To get an idea of how this works, take a look at a demonstration Brainchild Forum we conducted for Guardian Angel. The respondents were all MBA students at The Sloan School of Management at NYU who agreed to help evaluate a new product that allows people to assess whether they've consumed too much alcohol to drive.