The new focus groups?

The New York Times published a piece last week about “new” approaches to qual research including collaging and journaling: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/business/media/30focus.html?_r=4&hp=&pagewanted=all

I have a couple of issues with the piece. First, these approaches aren’t new—I personally have been employing them since the mid-90s, and they've likely been in practice longer. I'm pretty sure that I wrote an internal white paper about this very same topic—up-and-coming qual approaches such as collaging and participatory design—in 1997.

Second, the “here’s why focus groups are bad” example that they cite is the New Coke launch from 1985.

It's disheartning that such an outdated piece is coming from The Times. And I'm becoming increasingly annoyed with all of the "focus groups are bad" griping. Yes, there are downsides to focus groups. And they can sometimes be a useful tool.

Rather than bash existing research tools to make our "new" tools look better by comparison, can't we just explore the new tool's strengths, weaknesses, and promise? If in your explanation of a new research approach, you use focus groups as a comparative foil, you have turned me off.

You lost me at "better than the New Coke focus groups"...