Deep Thoughts on Customer Insights
"an instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing"
-Dictionary.com definition of insight i kid you not
Spring 2012 blog for class
by kristin miller aka krankmills
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One main skill that I definitely understand better as a result of this course is the difference, but essentiality of both the diverging-converging and converging stages of the prototyping process. When it was first mentioned in class I was unsure, especially about the diverging stage (of course as an MBA I can always edit and converge). This is the idea that there are points in the process when you are diverging - meaning all ideas are written down, considered, and explored - you don’t say no to anything. Following that is the converging stage when, after gathering both quantitative and qualitative data, you can narrow down on a single prototype that gets developed further. This project helped me be more open to the divergent stage simply through practice. There were certainly times in our early discussions where an idea was proposed and our first instincts may have screamed “no!” but thanks to Professor Walls’ continued reminders that we were still in the divergent stage, we wrote down. Ultimately this was a good thing, as I believe my first instinct was to prototype around something we ultimately did not use - Pinterest - while another of our ideas that I initially dismissed - the prepull service - went on to be the cornerstone of our final prototype, supported by data. The divergent stage definitely crystallized into a necessity in my opinion after that experience with our group’s prototyping project.
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1. What are you personal experiences with individual creativity? Have you had times when you felt especially creative or, even, especially uncreative?
I do think of myself as a creative person. I was the non-traditional applicant to business school, with experience in the arts and a lot of graphic design work on my resume. However I have also had moments where I am wracked with doubt about my own creativity. I’ve often felt like more of a Solieri than a Mozart (not that I know anyone who would have the balls to liken themselves to Mozart - although perhaps that is the kind of confidence/ambition/delusion that it takes to truly pursue a career as an artist) - capable of recognizing great creativity, design and insight, but perhaps not of creating at such a level myself.
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In class that you can turn anything into a paper topic, so I hope you can help me ground my current idea which I am in love with, but perhaps having trouble narrowing into an 8-10 page paper topic. Certainly I have found research pertaining to measuring a theme park experience. One academic article, “Evaluating the Guest Experience at Theme Parks: An Empirical Investigation of Key Attributes” looks promising. However I want to target my focus a bit further: towards theme parks (and general merchandising) that is designed to match a pre-existing experience in alternate media (Like books, as in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, or movies, as in Disney parks.) I find this topic especially interesting now that our animated movies have moved towards the stylized-and-yet-hyper-realistic look with the advent of computer animation. While you used to have some wiggle room interpreting how to bring Cinderella from this to this, it’s a more difficult challenge to go from this to this.
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For our second blog assignment, we were asked about qualitative insights we can gain from our behavior on social media sites. Based on my own usage, there are a few areas that I have been curious about.
What makes us post different information on different social media sites? Certainly there are technical differences – length allowances, etc—but as social media sites converge (think of Facebook adding the functionality of whatever new social media site has popped up recently) what keeps me posting certain statuses to Facebook, while Twitter gets others? Why would they overlap sometimes? And what deeper insights about myself can I gain from this behavior? I think most of it comes down to building relationships with these internet friends/strangers and projecting the person we want to be with bits of who we really are sprinkled throughout.
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For our first assignment, I chose to create a persona for James, a baby boomer, retired but couldn’t stay retired, an affluent 63-year old white male living in a NYC suburb and my father. When debating who to choose for this assignment, I thought my father would be an interesting choice because though we are similar in temperament and life experience (at least my life experience very nearly mimics his for most of my life), we have very different interests and outlooks on things and thus often have trouble talking and connecting. Perhaps some empathy is needed here.
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Video reblogged from Olivia is Ferosch
Thoughts on brands/marks from a 5 year old.
Amazing to see what the kid knows cold, the ones she can associate with a product/place and what she just guesses.
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We got our first blog assignment today. Thinking on the line
I’ll let you figure out if the person is dissimilar enough from you to benefit from the exercise
made me think - who is the most dissimilar from me?
And thought of Forever Lazy owners.
I wonder if Forever Lazy Owner is a valid persona?
But seriously, what customer insight brought us here? And who is this person that wears this? Who is the person that wears this outside??
