On Tuesday we had the opportunity to meet with our professor and discuss where we were in our customer discovery process. During this meeting, we talked about the insights we had gained, the surveys we had taken, and the summaries we would be coming up with. From our surveys, expert interviews, and market research we had three key insights discussed in our customer discovery memo. These were:
- There is definitely a need for this product (as shown by public safety response about the number of calls they get a day to unlock doors and market research saying the educational security market is growing 3.6% per year until 2020).
- Organized people will want to buy our product in order to stay organized (as shown by our target market survey and market research that says 34% of people consider themselves above average organizationally).
- Our target market should focus on young people, specifically between the ages of about 25-54 (as shown by our market research because they have the highest propensity to buy organizational products).
On Thursday we had the opportunity to meet with the engineers in a combined classroom. Throughout the class, we did many activities that helped us think about our product in terms of our customers. The first thing we did was a customer journey map. In this process we talked about what happened before, during, and after the customer experienced the painpoint we are trying to fix. Our journey map is pictured below.
As a continuation of this, we created an empathy map. An example of an empathy map is pictured to the right. The feelings and emotions we used were mentioned above. The most important defining word we decided on was roommates because our customers seemed to be reliant on their roommates to remember their keys or let them in when they were locked out. Some thoughts and beliefs we identified were "this won't happen to me" and "I don't need help staying organized." Finally, some actions and behaviors we thought were important were being in a rush, throwing your keys down when you enter your room, and leaving too close to class time. This helped us get a better idea about our customers' interaction with our product.
We also talked about our value proposition. This is basically a short statement about our product so people know what it is and become interested in it. Additionally, it is something that our entire group should memorize for the Expo. It should say how our product solves the problem, what benefits we will provide, and why we are different from alternatives. The elements of a value proposition are shown to the left. Our first draft value proposition is written down; however, we are looking to edit it in the coming days.
Through this process we identified a couple of emotions that our customers would experience. These include anxiety, panic, stress, and frustration.
As a continuation of this, we created an empathy map. An example of an empathy map is pictured to the right. The feelings and emotions we used were mentioned above. The most important defining word we decided on was roommates because our customers seemed to be reliant on their roommates to remember their keys or let them in when they were locked out. Some thoughts and beliefs we identified were "this won't happen to me" and "I don't need help staying organized." Finally, some actions and behaviors we thought were important were being in a rush, throwing your keys down when you enter your room, and leaving too close to class time. This helped us get a better idea about our customers' interaction with our product.
We also talked about our value proposition. This is basically a short statement about our product so people know what it is and become interested in it. Additionally, it is something that our entire group should memorize for the Expo. It should say how our product solves the problem, what benefits we will provide, and why we are different from alternatives. The elements of a value proposition are shown to the left. Our first draft value proposition is written down; however, we are looking to edit it in the coming days.
Finally, we briefly talked about developing a buying persona and our posters for the expo. A value persona is a description of what our average customer would look like. This includes their age, activities/interests, income, residence, and any other personal qualities that could influence their buying behavior. My group is very excited about the development of our poster. We feel as though our concept with keys and doors will lend itself to having an extremely creative poster design.
In general, this week was all about our customers for our projects. We were able to learn a great deal about what our customer looks like and what they are looking for. This has helped us to get an idea of what we will talk about to people at the Engineering Expo, and how we can get our product to be of interest to customers. Overall, we are looking forward to the final weeks of this project and being able to share it with our fellow students and faculty at the Expo!!
Happy Easter!!
-Kristen
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