For my last blog entry for this class, I’m going to be talking about what I learned from my group project that I did this semester. We had to create an original product for a specific segment that was geared to a particular room in their house. My group ended up creating a new type of filing system for young, married couples with children for their home offices. I’m going to talk about two different concepts or skills that we talked about during class that I really feel I understand better because of my project. Then I’ll discuss how I felt about the project in general.
Topic #1- Gaining and Evaluating Insights
Gaining insights essentially refers to collecting data from your target market in order to determine their habits, desires, and needs. Evaluating insights is the way in which data collected is categorized and organized because it acts as a starting point when coming up with new ideas for products.
This project really taught me a great deal about gaining and evaluating insights because my group had to not only come up with an appropriate survey, but we needed actual couples to respond to our survey. On top of that, we had to find a common way to interpret everything we collected. We were pretty lucky compared to other groups because three of my group members, including myself, had access to our segment, so we were able to distribute our survey pretty quickly.
Topic #2- Paradox of Choice
The second area that I think this project really helped me learn more about was the Paradox of Choice. Honestly, I think this topic is one that I will remember for the rest of my life. The reason this topic stands out in my mind in relation to the group project is because of the segment that my group chose to focus on—the All Inclusives. Our segment, like I mentioned before, includes young, married couples with planned children who have high-income levels. That being said, they are constantly busy and have a million things going on at once.
That being said, they are continuously faced with so many different options of what to focus on that they must choose one. For example, our segment told us that while they’re at work, they’re thinking about their children. However, while they’re with their children, they’re thinking about work. It’s as if whatever decision they make just isn’t satisfying, which is similar to the Paradox of Choice.
My Feelings about the Group Project
I really enjoyed working on this project this semester because it was unlike any project I’ve ever worked on. I’ve had to come up with marketing programs and strategies in my other classes, but I’ve never had to come up with a completely new product altogether. It was interesting to see how creative my group and I could get within the directions of the project.
My teammates and I worked well together because, in my opinion, we are all very different. We all come from different backgrounds and have different personalities, so I think this worked well for us.
I think one thing that my team and I did well is spend time on each individual update when it was assigned. We were thorough with our work, which really paid off in the end because it wasn’t very difficult for us to compile all of our previous updates while coming up with our final presentation. Additionally, since every person was well aware of our segment, our room, and our data, we were able to bounce product ideas off of each other fairly easily, so we didn’t have many problems coming up with an interesting product. I really think working with a group did enhance my learning of the material because we were able to apply what we learned to a real situation.
As far as working with Professor Walls on the project, he gave us good feedback on our various updates, which helped us move in the appropriate direction. I think the feedback he gave us on our product also guided us in the right direction because we were able to rethink certain aspects that needed more work.
Overall, I really enjoyed this group project and this class in general. I’m glad I was able to take it before graduating from UT!
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