Focus group member Jason Riley reluctantly completes a page of the free homework available at the site.

Freehomework.com tests poorly with youth focus group

Scheduled to go live online Nov. 3, the advertising revenue-based site freehomework.com will provide schoolchildren throughout the world with access to free homework worksheets that can be downloaded, printed off and completed by the user. From science to math to geography, the homework - none of which is required to be completed by the students' teachers, parents or other authority - will be available for download twenty-four hours a day for children wishing to do more work than is currently being assigned in their daily academic curriculum.

"Almost without exception, the focus group members expressed adamant aversion to the site's overall concept," wrote focus group moderator David Avery in his summary report. "Though the youths were anxious to work with computers, they seemed reluctant to acquire homework from the site while the option to do so remained just that - an option."

According to the nine-page report, the six focus group members interacted with the site individually and in teams for 45 minutes, spent 30 minutes completing downloaded worksheets, and then engaged in a 45-minute roundtable discussion with Avery regarding their experiences.

Avery wrote that the group's reaction to the site was "balefully unenthusiastic."

"Among the adjectives most often used to describe the site were 'stupid,' 'retarded,' 'boring,' and 'gay,'" the report said in the section titled "Negative Responses," which entailed three pages. These responses are again mentioned in the report's closing recommendations: "Interface designers may want to look for possible ways to make the site less stupid, retarded, boring and/or gay."

Avery told reporters about the difficulty he encountered moderating the group.

"The main goal of a focus group is to apply the right exercises and ask the right questions in order to find out what the users really want from the system," Avery said. "In this case, the answer to that question seems to be quite clear: nothing. The user wants nothing to do with a web site devoted to obtaining extra homework - whether the product is free or not."

Added Avery: "This was also the first focus group I've ever moderated in which the members continually called into question the need for the product's existence. In the summary, I interpreted that as being a bad thing."

One of the members of the focus group, fourth grader Jason Riley, candidly expressed to reporters his frustration regarding the site.

"Homework sucks," said Riley, 10. "Mr. Avery told us that we were all going to have a lot of fun but then he made us do a bunch of stupid homework. I asked him if I could go to the Dexter's Laboratory web site but he made me stay at the homework site. It isn't even fair that our teacher gives us homework in the first place, but having to do more homework on top of that really isn't fair."

Freehomework.com is the brainchild of company CEO Jeffrey Gordon, who believes the timeless focus on education among industrialized nations will bring to the site swarms of children anxious to get a leg-up on their classmates by taking on extra homework solely of their own volition.

Gordon, 47, discounted the focus group's findings.

"Don't get me wrong, focus groups can be a powerful tool in system development, but you shouldn't use them as your only source of data," said Gordon. "That these six kids were not wowed by the site does not mean that the other three billion kids in the world will feel the same way.

"Maybe these kids were tired or are dealing with a bad upbringing in the home, you know?" added Gordon. Gordon then placed the report squarely on his impeccably tidy desk and listened intently for the sound of even a single telephone ringing in the advertising department.

October 2003