A concept that I can now fully grasp is the process of gaining insights and how vital it is to developing a product that people will actually want to buy. It never really dawned on me how new products came into existence. Sometimes it is really difficult for a consumer to explain what they truly need or want so exploring their emotions and behavior is crucial. I was never really aware of how involved of a process it was from beginning to end to create a product. With the help of this project, I was able to better understand the concept of customer insights. For our segment, we produced a survey and asked them to complete it and do a photo journal so that we could understand single older dads more accurately. By focusing on trying to grasp more about these men instead of trying to come up with a product, I feel we created something they didn’t even know they wanted. We discovered that their bedroom was very functional and no design element really existed. We used those insights to provide our segment with a solution to their decorating issues. Getting a bigger picture of what our segment was all about really helped us to design a product that would meet their needs. I really enjoyed learning about the progression of gaining insights and the steps that are involved. I now realize how beneficial insights are, and I am thankful that this project exposed me to the entire process.
Another concept that I understand better now, thanks to this class, is the process of prototyping. When I initially thought about the different aspects of marketing and gaining customer insight, prototyping was not at the fore front of my mind. The guest speaker did a great job of expanding my knowledge about the different steps in the development process. In my mind, I always thought a prototype had to be an elaborate creation with working parts; however, I learned that it is more about visualizing the style, color, and being able to feel its weight. I was a little overwhelmed that we were going to have to actually prototype our product because its one thing to formulate an idea and another thing to bring it to life. It was difficult deciding what we wanted to use and then rounding up the material for our product because our budget was really small. We went back and forth with the size of the prototype, the packaging, what we were going to put in our décor in a box, etc. I was a little worried that the things we were putting in our box didn’t really match, and in my head I wanted it to be cuter and more life-like. I felt so much better after talking to Professor Walls about the fact that we are not prototyping a lamp because everyone knows what a lamp looks like- we are prototyping the idea of every piece being seen together. We didn’t have to kill ourselves on everything being perfectly to scale as long as our idea of the collection of pieces was portrayed. We definitely had our share of issues, but being able to actually prototype a project taught me how much of a valuable step this is. It really made me focus on different aspects that I would never have really thought about- such as the packaging for our box.
At first, when I found out about the project my sarcastic reaction was like, “oh joy, another group project” because I have had some bad experiences before. However, by the end, I really enjoyed this project, and I feel I learned a lot about gaining customer insights. My emotional reaction started out irritated, but with some hope that this would be a fun project. I thought we picked a very interesting segment, so I was very optimistic about the potential products we could produce. At times I was a little frustrated with the updates because I didn’t see the big picture of how helpful they would be in the end. It was a little difficult to find the correct people in our segment to conduct research on. In my head, I thought the process would be a lot simpler. However, after we finally came up with a product and worked through our prototyping issues, I felt accomplished! I am very glad we worked in teams because I felt more creativity flowed by bouncing ideas off of each other. My team worked well together, and I think we did a good job of sharing the work load. With every group there is always the challenge of combining personalities and ideas, but I feel we did a good job of listening to one another. Any frustration I had was ended by a sense of relief once we finished to project. I think working with my group contributed to my learning and enjoyment of the material. If ever I didn’t understand a concept or topic, I felt I could ask my group about it so they could it explain it to me more in depth. I liked the process of the project; however, I do wish we could have sent out another survey once we knew what our product was so that we could gain even more insight. I enjoyed that with this project we got to be creative with our hands. Professor Walls always did a great job with answering all of our questions and giving us suggestions that would help us with our project.
