The initial stage of brainstorming proves to be the hardest, especially when we are in a dire need of a tipping point.
Our team - Ed, Jay and I - took great pain in generating workable ideas. Most of which circulate around the idea that it should be practically implementable - like an online portal.
Here are the final two that we presented to Mr. Reddy in class.
Planning an itinerary for your free & easy travel?
This seems like a good idea initially. We come up with this idea because of the lack of travelling websites that deal specifically in generating out itineraries for young travellers. As I've friends who endear wikitravel as the travelling bible in planning their routes around a continent like Europe, we simply felt that the idea was implementable.
Of course, later on, Jay suggested limiting the scope to merely Singapore first for the ease of implementation.
However, when presenting this idea, the issue of need arises - is there really a need for such thing? Can target users identify with our concept? Anyway, we scrap this idea in the end because of all the hurdles we are facing.
In need of a virtual place to manage your projects?
With IVLE community revamped to something completely unusable for projects, and other online methods insufficient to meet our needs, we come to the conclusion that THIS is what we want to do for our final project.
Who are we?
We took the name of an online software developer ZOHO since they already have an existing range of softwares targeted at making online project management easier. We felt that in assuming this role, we are better positioned as someone who has the expertise to make such a software a success if it is in demand among the student population.
What we did?
We conducted a preliminary survey on 31 students and collected qualitative information from five respondents to get a general idea of whether there is a need for a new project management portal.
Questions are designed to test the current project management behavior, attitude and perception of NUS students. From then on, we make inferences on the needs of NUS students.
SO... really... is there a need?
From our results, we have proved that more than 90% of users do use online platforms for project management and feel the current methods inadequate in meeting their needs.
This is really the gist of our research as well as the data we need to further our efforts in understanding the users.
Reflection
Keeping our focus - Not the product first, need first, please.
Before the process of brainstorming, we have basically started off with a wrong approach - instead of thinking about the issue of need from a user's perspective, we are geared towards thinking as marketers who seek to market an already conceptualized product to the people without really understanding what is needed in a product by users. Hence, we discard our initial idea, and starts a new thought process of imaginingg ourselves as users, and as students about what we will want. This helps us alot.
Seriously, we have no idea what product will turn out... now
Going through this thought process makes me realize that unlike other courses that I have taken, I did not already have an envisioned end-product in mind. At times, it is like treading on unfamiliar ground, and could turn scary.
But as we got deeper into the issue of need, and realized what users really want, I got more interested in finding answers from users and coming up with ways to "outsmart" them by providing them with not only something that meet their needs, but exceed their needs.
No comments:
Post a Comment