The End

I had the most fun with this project at the beginning and I believe it is because I really began to understand how to hypothesize or describe the nittty-gritty details of a segments behavioral and psychographic profile, at least within the brainstorming/extreme stereotyping phase. Describing someone’s potential behaviors and ways of thinking before you have even met them is a skill you cultivate through listening, observing, noting, and simply thinking logically about the experiences you have already had with this segment. All of these attributes culminated in a more informed and educated stereotypical representation of the segment when beginning this project. For example, when we (group 7) began our project, we were each forced to think critically about our past experiences with affluent empty nesters (i.e. some of our parents in this case). Though we might have been subconsciously aware of our segments behaviors, attitudes, and psychographic tendencies, the project really made us analyze all these past experiences and hypothesize about potential trends in behavior and thinking.

I also feel like I better understand what actually goes into a prototype and that prototyping is a process. Especially the fact that you brought in a professional industrial designer to discuss what goes into a prototyping and how it evolves ( I really enjoyed that lecture). The idea of good prototyping is that your first prototype is not going to be perfect or the “winner”, but that is simply suppose to convey the form and possibly the basic function of the device and then over time, you incorporate scale, weight, and more accurate materials that will resemble the final product. For example, my groups prototype evolution process went as follows: when we were initially concepting our “Magic Mirror” prototype it consisted of drawings and a few similar visual representations online. From there we began to experiment with materials, which was a difficult part of our prototype given it was mirror glass. We wanted to be able to mold our materials so, we finally decided on mirrored paper, wax paper, and paper screen shots to convey our basic product idea. Finally, we wanted to give the illusion of glass and appropriate weight so, we incorporated a piece of glass at the back of the prototype to weight our prototype and add to the illusion that the entire prototype was made of glass. This entire long process helped me to take what the Industrial Design speaker has said about prototyping and see it actually occur.

This project was a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me. I started with extremely high hopes for the project and my group (possibly to my detriment) and well, things didn’t end up exactly how I imagined. Firstly, I love the premise of the class and the related project, however the loose nature of the project (i.e. groups really had a lot of leeway with certain areas) made for some rough times with my group. We were smaller (3 people as opposed to 5-6). I think this alone got us started on the wrong foot because we were already feeling at a disadvantage from the beginning and were never able to rally against this. The group also had an odd dynamic because of the differing personalities and work ethics. Though it was good learning for a real world situation, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a huge hindrance to getting work done. In regards to you, Prof. Walls, I had a generally good experience though I did feel as if our group received less direct guidance along the way. Honestly, that is in part our fault because we just as easily asked for it, but is nonetheless an emotional reaction I experienced during this project. The process of the project was a good experience. I felt like it had a very logically course of action and helped us to narrow down and better define our insights as we went through the project guidelines. No notable emotional reactions on that account. As for my enjoyment of the project, working with my group mostly did not add much. I say this hesitantly because I did like the people in my group; however, I don’t think they enjoyed the project much and it was noticeable in their actions toward group meetings etc. It seemed like no one wanted to be there, which makes me wonder why they joined the class in the first place but alas. Overall, it was a huge task just to keep certain group members on topic with what we were working on. Working with my team probably added more learning on group dynamics and team management than in customer insights. Customer insights learning and enjoyment was done more on my own our during lecture, which I greatly enjoyed.