When the Customer Insights class started in January, I was very reluctant to believing many of the concepts that the class dealt with. I did not believe that everyone has a “designer” inside or that every person can be creative. It was difficult for me to believe that I had the ability to create a product. I had never considered myself like someone that has a creative imagination; I actually thought that I did not like to be or could not be imaginative and that I was more of a “numbers” person. Therefore, entering the class it was really hard for me to believe what I was hearing, but I gave it a shot and actually realized that I’m more creative than I thought and I do have the ability to understand a customer’s needs but also create something that can satisfy their requirements. An idea that was really interesting to me was the concept of “design”. I was not expecting the fact that design can be related to many things and even designing a new business concept or a product, but after being in class and listening to different speakers it give me the impression that it could actually be done. Additionally, I started progressing during the final project and I realized that I did have the ability and personality to “design” something new. For example, when we started reviewing the information about our interviews and photo journal I understood the need for the prototype we created. We went through many product iterations and saw that every time we were working on the prototype, we were getting something better and of different materials.
The Customer Insights class provided me with many different concepts but there were two that caught my attention and I felt like created more value to my personal development and probably my professional career. During the development of the Insight/Experience Audit & Prototype project I explored the customer insight concept. It was fascinating to see how a photo journal can give so much insight into a person’s life and also how the interpretation of the pictures can be really different from a face to face interview. I learned that once you interview your persona and ask questions about the pictures, the explanations are totally different and you need to go deeper into what they are feeling and thinking. For example, some personas tried explaining their photos over email, but once you go and sit with them you realize that the pictures mean much more to them that you actually expected and have a totally different meaning. These two techniques let you learn and understand what a customer needs or what they want, basically an insight.
The final project was a great learning experience. I had never been so involved in developing a product, even though I took a couple of entrepreneurship classes during my undergrad. I think there wasn’t anything not useful to the project because every phase of the ads value to the final presentation. It was necessary to think about the persona we wanted to target, to understand their needs through the photo journal and interview, creating the prototype and receiving feedback on the first design. More than something not useful, I think that the most complicated thing about the project is the timing because we have limited time to do every stage of the project and getting time from our personas it is also something really difficult. I don’t think there could be a better way because it wasn’t necessarily hard to work on, it was just tough to fit with all the schedules.
During the development of the project I experienced several emotional reactions. At the beginning, the first emotion I experienced was disbelief on the whole concept of design and customer insights. Second, I went through frustration because I didn’t know what to do with or how to deal with not believing in my ability to be creative. Third, I dealt with uncertainty because I didn’t know what product to develop. Fourth, I experienced fear on not being able of building the prototype because we didn’t know what materials to use. And finally, I experienced relief because we were able to get a good prototype and good feedback from our personas.
I feel that working with my group was a great experience because we dealt well with uncertainty, working together and developing new ideas. Also, I think that the project has a good process of showing how an actual product is being developed, all the way from the idea to the final product design. Working with you as a professor was really comforting because you never doubted on the fact that I was going to be able to create a product or in my hidden ability to be creative.
