Does This Mean It's Time to Graduate?

THE PROJECT

After this course, and specifically the Insight/Experience Audit & Prototype, I feel more confident in my abilities and experience with primary research. As marketing majors, we are given the most instruction on how to create and conduct survey research. This class has opened my eyes to new methods, some of which I believe supply information far more insightful and interesting than any information a survey might reveal.

A survey is a good starting point, but I have learned that these additional methods are effective in supplementing and confirming or disproving the data collected from the survey. Specific to our project, we started initially with only a survey, but we knew we would try another method as well. I will admit, the concept of more vague research methods felt somewhat foreign to us, but through class examples from previous projects we were aware of their effectiveness. We decided to create collage pages with some direct stimuli related to our room in the house, the home office. We also added additional stimuli to the pages that were more vague, such as emotion words, and random pictures that were not related to the room, but were intended to invoke certain emotions in respondents.

What we found was that participants seemed almost as unsure about the method as we were, because many of them either didn’t respond to our request, or replied that none of our stimuli were applicable to them. However, I do not blame respondents for the miscommunication and confusion. This was our first attempt at this sort of research, and I think it is going to take trial and error for us to gain the skills necessary to adequately conduct it. We did receive some insightful responses, which I am proud of for a first attempt. The responses from this portion of our primary research served to reinforce the insights we obtained from the survey methodology, which made us more confident that we were catering to the proper insights while creating our product idea.

Regardless of some bumps in the road, doing this project and getting hands on experience with new research methodology has given me a new tool to use when I embark on a career and/or continued education after I graduate.

Another reason why this project was a valuable experience is that it mirrors how projects will be completed in my professional life after college. First, I appreciated the time management it required. I am usually just given a project and a due date, with very few checkpoints in between. The regularity of the project updates not only kept us on top of our work, but also allowed us to reflect on our methodology in completing the project and adjust it if needed.

Additionally, very few concrete instructions were given, which I found far more useful than if we were to receive a page of succinct requirements. This gave us freedom in that we could be creative and present the data that we felt most relevant. There’s not always going to be someone standing over my shoulder telling me exactly what to do, so this was a great starting point in getting used to that format.

MY TEAM

I feel really fortunate to have been assigned to team 3. Our team could not have been more diverse in regards to our backgrounds and specialties. Toni gave a great international perspective, Josh works for a software company, which gave him access to multiple members of our segment and made him our resident tech-specialist, Lacey’s creativity was an asset to the prototyping process, and Alpana had drive and organization and really kept the team in line. As for myself, I am idea-driven and my brain is constantly churning, which proved very useful when coming up with a product idea in the first place.

Initially, I was worried that we would run into problems because we all have competing responsibilities, in addition to different personalities and interests. I was pleasantly surprised that this very rarely posed a problem, but instead made for a productive team environment. We bounced ideas off of one another and were able to expand on the ideas that team members voiced. It was rare that any one team member would stand behind an idea without actively taking other opinions or criticisms into account. Overall, working with a team made this project valuable because everyone brought something different to the table.

Professor Walls was also quite helpful throughout the course of our project. Like I said before, I liked that his instructions were somewhat vague, giving us the freedom to take the approach that best fit our visions for the project. This had the potential to be problematic if Professor Walls had not been readily available to answer our questions or to provide us with feedback or suggestions. Luckily, he was always there to lend his advice, which I know our team found valuable.

One final note - this class has been a wonderful part of my marketing experience at UT. It really got me thinking about my true needs and desires as a consumer. Also, I have thoroughly enjoyed blogging, and will probably continue since it basically became a part of my routine. It's not as hard as I thought it would be, and it's pretty great having a place to voice my opinions.

Now on to graduation...