Background
This exercise will help you practice your customer observation skills and also help you to develop a broader range of ideas for the project. Simply watching potential customer behaviors (unobtrusively) and talking to people is an excellent way to identify product opportunities. Remember the lecture on consumer persona. Any time that you are out and about is an opportunity to observe!
This exercise will help your 2.009 project idea generation for your Team meeting 2. We realize this is tight for Tuesday lab teams, but you will also have more time between lab and the 6 ideas milestone. The locations below should be somewhat easily accessible.
A course instructor will discuss consumers and personas in class on Monday and this ethnography primer might also be of help.
Instructions
Team members should review the location options and pick one place to observe before your team meeting. If you would like to coordinate with classmates on other teams (working in teams of up to 3 people), please do. This can also help if time/availability is limited. The SIs can help with organizing who goes where (for example using a Google Form, Slack, or other scheduler), and if there are locations that are more pertinent to some of your ideas than those listed below, please feel free to add to the list.
Suggested location options include:
an airport/bus/train station
a fire station
a park
a machine shop
a grocery or hardware store
a post office
a playground
a gym
a clinic or doctor’s practice
a busy intersection
a hiking trail
a sport practice or event
a community center
an ice cream or candy store
a workshop or art studio
a commercial kitchen
a laundromat
a zoo or aquarium
a construction site
a mall
a club
a restaurant
Go to your assigned place and observe.
Based on what you see, generate at least 10 different possible project ideas. Later, pick what you think is a good, feasible idea from your list and make a more detailed sketch that is suitable for pin-up during your next team meeting.
You should be prepared to take about 2 minutes to present your idea and sketch in Team meeting 2.