Reflecting on Customer Insights

One of the most important concepts that we discussed in class, and the one that I tried to take to heart the most, was the need to design products that really add value to the customer’s life. The best products are not those that simply give customers another “thing” to purchase, or another item to clutter their living environment, but rather they are innovative and have the potential to change the customer’s behaviors for the better. In my own life, I have purchased a number of products that I’ve used once or twice and then never picked up again, many of which I can’t even remember. The truly memorable items that I’ve purchased, the ones that I think fondly of and can’t imagine living without, are the ones that really added value to my life: the mp3 player that allows me to customize my songs and listen to them wherever I go, the organizers that are easy to use and help me keep my life in order, those special items of clothing that makes me feel great every time I put them on. I wanted to try and duplicate these sorts of experiences in the product that we created for the semester project. This is why we focused on thinking about the customer and what they were truly looking for when they purchased our Digital Game Board. We discovered that, above the desire for organization and simplicity, there was an overarching desire to foster family time, to find activities that the whole family could enjoy. This was the primary goal that we kept in mind as we moved through the various steps of our project, and I feel that the end result did indeed reflect the customers’ needs, so in the end I think we learned a lot and succeeded in applying the knowledge we have developed.
A very complimentary point that was also emphasized in class was the need to actually talk to your target market to get the best understanding of their needs. Before I took this class, I assumed that most companies relied primarily on general demographic information, and actually this may still be true. But what I learned is that this is not how the best companies operate, the ones who produce the revolutionary products that change the world. I look back at my first blog this semester and have plenty of evidence of how misguided my thinking was before taking this class. Surely there is a time and a place for demographic information, but the generative research methods we learned about and used this semester have truly resonated with me as a result of the much deeper and more meaningful information we were able to generate from them. The majority of our insights came from sitting down in the houses of our interviewees, looking at their environments, getting to know their daily routines, finding out about that things that truly mattered to them, and asking them questions about unmet needs in their lives. We saw messy living rooms that left parents unsatisfied, talked to children that were much more tech savvy at a younger age than we expected, and overall we saw that the interactions between these two groups should be where we focused our attention. Sure, some of these insights could have been gathered through questionnaires, assuming that we asked the right questions, but overall the depth of our understanding of our target market was only possible through the generative research techniques that I now value highly.
I have always been a big supporter of group work as long as my fellow group members are committed to our goal and can be relied upon, and I had no such issues with my team this semester. As a result, I have no doubt that the project turned out much better as a result of all of our inputs. It goes back to that one class period where we had to come up with a caption for a cartoon. If we each had to complete that task separately I don’t think the quality of our outputs would have been all that great, but because we were able to approach the problem as a group, we wound up with a variety of ideas and suggestions that helped make the final product much better. The key word is synergy; each of the members of our group had different strengths and weaknesses that, when combined, resulted in a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. Examples include LeeAnn’s ability to generate new ideas and start discussions, Chesney’s creativity that allowed her to take the lead on the physical prototype design, and my skills as an MIS major which allowed me to visualize the software side of the project and create PowerPoint slides to represent my vision. There were plenty of times throughout the project where we all felt a little lost, or were unsure of which direction we should take an idea in, but as a team we were able to sort through these issues and emerge with a much clearer vision. And, of course, I felt that the project was just more enjoyable overall as a result of the team aspect and our interactions, which is another big reason that I was very happy with this project and my team’s ability to accomplish our goals.