🗓️ Before Class: Teacher Prep
- Gather/set out: A finished piece from an earlier Client Project (logo, ad campaign, or style guide), A written question guide (one per interviewer), Notecards or a shared doc for recording responses.
- Pull up today's slide deck (see 🖥️ Slide Deck below) so it's ready to project.
🧑🏫 Substitute Teacher Guide
A scripted, step-by-step runsheet for today's class -- hand this to anyone covering the room who doesn't know the daily routine.
- Day 1: 📋 Open Substitute Guide
- Day 2: 📋 Open Substitute Guide
🎯 Essential Question
- How do we find out whether a design actually works for the audience it was made for, instead of just guessing?
📈 Learning Objectives
By the end of this lesson (2 Days), students will be able to:
- Explain the difference between a critique (peers judging craft) and a focus group (target audience reacting as real users).
- Write 4-5 unbiased focus-group questions that avoid leading the audience toward a "right" answer.
- Run a short focus group on a finished piece from an earlier Client Project and record specific, usable notes.
- Identify at least 2 concrete changes the focus-group feedback suggests, separate from anything a peer critique already caught.
📐 Standards Alignment
CDOS (Career Development & Occupational Studies)
- CDOS 2 — Integrated Learning -- students will demonstrate how academic knowledge and skills are applied in the workplace and other settings.
- CDOS 3a — Universal Foundation Skills -- basic literacy, communication, and problem-solving skills required for a career.
- CDOS 3b — Career Majors -- knowledge and skills required for success within a specific career pathway (here, Digital Design).
ACP (Adobe Certified Professional) Photoshop Exam Objectives
- ACP 1.1 — Identify the purpose, audience, and audience needs for preparing images.
- ACP 1.4 — Demonstrate knowledge of key terminology related to digital images.
🎓 Study this for the ACP exam: Domain 1: Working in the Design Industry
📚 Key Vocabulary
- Focus Group
- A small group of people from a design's actual target audience, gathered to react to it and give feedback -- different from a critique, where peers judge craft and technique.
- Leading Question
- A question worded so it nudges the answer toward what the asker wants to hear (e.g. "Don't you love this color?") -- the opposite of what a useful focus-group question should do.
- Usability
- How easily a real, untrained person can understand and use a design without extra explanation.
- Bias
- Letting a designer's own attachment to their work quietly steer the questions or the notes taken during feedback.
🧰 Materials & Tools
- A finished piece from an earlier Client Project (logo, ad campaign, or style guide)
- A written question guide (one per interviewer)
- Notecards or a shared doc for recording responses
🧠 Do Now (Warm-Up)
Think about the last time you asked a friend "does this look good?" Why is that a hard question for them to actually answer honestly?
📋 Main Workshop / Lesson Sequence
This lesson spans 2 Days. Suggested pacing:
| Day | Focus | Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Writing Unbiased Questions | Do Now (5 min, above): why is "does this look good?" a hard question to answer honestly? Mini-lesson (12 min): critique vs. focus group -- who's giving feedback and what they're qualified to judge; leading vs. neutral questions, with side-by-side examples ("Don't you love this?" vs. "What's the first thing you notice?"). Guided practice (10 min): as a class, rewrite 2 leading questions into neutral ones. Independent work (13 min): write your own 4-5 question guide for a finished piece from an earlier project. |
| Day 2 | Running the Focus Group | Do Now (5 min): swap question guides with a partner and flag any question that still sounds leading. Focus group (25 min): in small groups, take turns being the "audience" reacting to a classmate's finished piece using the question guide, while the designer takes notes without defending or explaining their choices. Debrief (15 min): each designer identifies at least 2 concrete changes the feedback suggests that a peer critique hadn't already caught, and writes them down. |
✅ Assessment & Exit Ticket
Question guide (checked for at least 4-5 neutral, non-leading questions) + written notes from the focus group + the 2 concrete changes identified, scored with a rubric.
Exit Ticket: What did a real audience notice about your design that you, as the person who made it, had completely missed?
📊 Pull up the anonymous Class Check-In for students to fill out before they go.
🧩 Differentiation & Accommodations
English Language Learners: model every step live, then check in one-on-one; provide translated materials and vocabulary support as needed. Students with IEPs: apply the accommodations and modifications listed in each student's plan (examples include extended time, graphic organizers, speech-to-text tools, chunked instructions, and visual schedules). Students with attention-related needs: break tasks into short, checklist-driven steps and provide brief movement or focus breaks. Students ready for a challenge: take on a leadership role critiquing peers' work, extend the project with a second iteration, or research how today's skill is used professionally in the field.