Blog 8 – Project Reflection

This project really drove home the importance of relationships in team building. Developing a strong, congenial rapport between team members early in the semester made a significant difference in the way that our group went about the project. It helped us better communicate our strengths as well as our needs, and increased communication as a whole. It also made the time spent working on this project much more enjoyable.

I built a much stronger understanding of developing and carrying out research though this project. It is an area that I was initially very uncertain about. Going through the process of coming up with key questions, defining research methods that focused in on those questions, and carrying out the research, helped me gain a much better understanding of this concept. I also had the opportunity to learn through observation. Some of my teammates were extremely good at laddering and gaining a deep understanding of the participants. Watching and listening to them helped me understand what a high quality interview looked like, and helped teach me how to model it.

There was no aspect of the project that stands out to me as not being of value. However, if I could make one change to the course it would be to further integrate the readings into in class discussions, blog posts, or some other aspect of the course. They were all very interesting, but I found it hard to make time to read them when there were other more concrete deadlines and deliverables for the class.

Customer insights is an area that I have been interested in since I began my marketing degree, so I was very excited about this project when I first learned about it. However, the ambiguity of the requirements made me somewhat uncomfortable. Having in class work time to bounce ideas off of Professor Walls and Ryan made a significant difference in our comfort level with the assignment as well as with the outcome of the project itself. Collaborating with a group on this project made it much more enjoyable, and helped to generate creativity and insights. However, I do feel that a smaller group size could have been more efficient. After choosing our persona, whom all of the girls immediately wanted to date, we began to worry that there would be no solution for this person. My ‘Aha!’ moment finally came when my group developed a strong problem statement with the help of Professor Walls. It finally felt more concrete, and we could see potential solutions to our persona’s problems. From there, developing a prototype was fairly straightforward. Finishing the project was exhausting, but the end result was worth it. I feel that the video format we chose helped give our audience a strong sense of our persona’s identity.