Reflections

One core concept from this course that I understand better as a result of working on this group project is the concept of “personas”. I originally thought that creating personas would be easy. Though creating our original persona was easy, it was not originally accurate. We used our stereotypes to create, basically, what we thought of as a perfect man. When we finally took a real look at our persona, the metro sexual bachelor, after beginning our research, we found many of our original persona details were faulty an inaccurate. For example, our bachelors did not make as much money as we assumed, they did not have a pet dog, and they did not entertain much at their apartments. I also uncovered that many insights are gained by going through the process of reevaluating personas. You are then able to ask – why are they not entertaining at their apartments – and see if there is an opportunity there. Also, after looking back I found that traditional segmentation is not necessarily the best. Metro sexual bachelors are not all that similar. Some of the only links we found were their desire to dress well and their desire for quality and/or expensive looking items. Possibly in the future I will look into more non-traditional ways of segmentation.

Another core concept from this course that I understand better as a result of working on a group project is “gaining insights”. Through actively going through the process of gaining insights, I better understand what each research method entails, as well as the time and struggles associated with each research method. Also, I was able to experience the pros and cons of each method. For example, my group employed both a traditional research method and a generative research method. We started off using a survey and requesting our participants take pictures of their living rooms. We were able to uncover very little with the survey, mostly because we were not asking the right questions and because participants were not readily willing to complete the survey in a timely manner or at all. Because we were trying to understand our persona in a very basic way through the survey, it might have been better if we had conducted an interview right off the bat to be better able to delve deeper into confusing answers or change the questions on the spot to questions that we realize might be better suited after all. Through the living room photos we were much better able to gain insights, though our group had even more trouble with participants sending in photos than surveys, probably because of the perceived notion that it is more involved and because possibly informants feel we are invading their privacy. Through generating questions from the photos and conducting phone interviews we were able to gain the best, most valuable insights. I would not have realized the importance of asking the right questions on interview and how wording a question makes such a difference if we had not gone through this process in our project. Also, I would not have realized the difference in the quality of information between different research methods or the difficulty in gathering that information from participants.

I had multiple emotional reactions along the way as I worked on this project. The primary emotions I felt were excitement, frustration, and relief. I felt excitement in being able to do a project that for once felt worth while to my education. I also felt excited that I was able to bring in some things I had learned from my other major, anthropology, to tie in and improve my marketing major skills. This was the first time I was able to really connect both of my majors. I felt frustration on multiple occasions with my teammates. In the beginning, we had difficulty understanding each other and melding our talents. We especially had trouble with commitment to the group and project. We were eventually able to overcome all of these problems. I also felt frustration when something did not go right. For example, when we had trouble getting surveys and photos back or when it seemed there were no connections/similarities between our metro sexual bachelors. I felt relief, especially in the end. Everything seemed to come together, because no one gave up. When it seemed there were no connections we looked deeper and when the group wasn’t committed we talked about it as a group and recommitted. As far as whether I think this group project was worth it, yes. I would not have learned nearly as much without working with a team on this group project. It made every concept more tangible and understandable, while revealing the realities of doing this kind of work. I also felt it was more like what I will experience when I enter the business world as an employee – the trials and successes of working with others.