I REALLY WISH I could attend to any of these focus groups. Be it any company, even the PHB's company.
For some reason, every product I 've bought the last 5 years has a certain "thing" that makes it a royal pain in the back to use.
Did anyone from Samsung actually asked the users if they want the stupid "picture enchance" feature, which cannot be disabled by the user and makes the picture look like a garbled mess of garish colors??
Has anyone from HP enginnering actually seen the reaction of any given user to the horrible sound the integrated speakers of their laptops produce? Now don't get me started on Nokia N series and their new "Gallery"...
Perhaps this is the reason opensource is taking over all things, one by one. All the above bonehead decisions (picture enchance on tvs, cheap speakers on expensive laptops, the new gallery on nokias) were made by some idiot PHB, and in opensource there are no PHBs!! (yeah!)
Well... it could be an "important" assignment...It just actually shows it happening.
It's probably also a managerial "intangible perk", sort of like asking someone how their family is doing