Using Social Media to Your Advantage

Hello, Everyone!

In my class, we are discussing the exciting world of social media. Anyone who pays attention remotely to marketing knows that social media is such a growing and important part of marketing. And yet, it is fascinating seeing as how marketers have seemingly only tapped the surface of the capabilities, uses, and potential that social media has to reach consumers.

My professor gave us the choice between 2 different sorts of assignments to give our input on social media. One of them, the one that I will be doing, asked that we discuss our history of social media research tools, and my professor pointed us in the direction of Google zeitgeist. Now, I had never heard of Google zeitgeist before, which is why I decided to do this suggested assignment. Its website describe Google zeitgeist as a collection of “several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for you to play with, explore, and learn from.” That being said, I decided to play with Google zeitgeist on the term “Kinect.” Now, I chose this because it is the newest product from Microsoft’s Xbox team and I recently bought a Kinect. However, I am fascinated to see how this product has been sought out by users. Knowing some about Microsoft and the Kinect, it is apparent that the Kinect is attempting to break the Xbox out of the specifically intense gamer market and branch out into the family-friendly market previously dominated by systems like the Nintendo Wii.

To begin, I should share that I have never done any formal research on social media tools. I am avid user of Facebook, as most college students are, and I recently got a Twitter to start exploring how that tool is used. I once had a MySpace and I’ve been on LinkedIn for a quite a while, having never taken the time to go deep on its capabilities. I consider myself someone who is slightly above average on the knowledge scale of technology and social media, but I certainly do not have all the answers. To tackle this assignment, I decided that I would pick a brand or product that I was interested in (in this case, the Kinect) and sort of do a general search using the Google zeitgeist tools. From there, I thought that I would develop some insights on how social media tools can help inform some marketing for the Kinect.

Now, on the main Google zeitgeist website, there are 4 tools: Google Trends, Trends for Websites, Insights for Search, and Hot Trends. Google Trends, a tool that gives a broad look of search queries, revealed that the #1 hotspot for a Kinect search came from the country of Mexico, followed relatively closely by the UK and then the U.S. The #1 language that the search on the Kinect was performed was English. Although Mexico was the #1 country doing the searches, the top cities performing searches on the Kinect were Poplar in the UK, Seattle, Washington, and Brentford in the UK. Geographically, it provided some interesting insight into the fact that the Kinect was gaining worldwide attention.

When using the Trends for Websites tool that tracks website traffic data, I had to use the Kinect website for the United States (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/kinect), but still found out that most visited websites in conjunction with the Kinect site were www.rememberreach.com (a website dedicated to the new Halo Reach game), www.majornelson.com (a blog dedicated to Xbox games and products), and www.mygamercard.net (an online gaming community). This was interesting because all of these websites have target audiences of people who are involved in gaming, which is not the ideal untapped family market that the Kinect will undoubtedly continue to try to reach.

The Insights for Search tool gives a deeper dive about search query data and revealed that that in the last 90 days, the “interest over time” had a significantly large jump around the launch date of the product (November 4). Rising searches showing that search terms such as “kinect reviews” jumping up +350%, “review kinect” rising by +250%, and “xbox kinect bundle” rising +180% demonstrates that people are indeed interested by the product and are looking into potentially purchasing the product. This gives a huge opportunity for marketers at Microsoft to capitalize on social media in order to reach this market during their peak interest.

The final tool I used from Google zeitgeist was Hot Trends, which shows the daily top 100 search queries in the U.S. The website only displayed the top 20 search queries per day, but when I looked on November 4, the release date of the Kinect, nothing showed up. In fact, nowhere from November 3 until today was there an Xbox, Microsoft, or Kinect search query in the top 20.

Overall, the Google zeitgeist search terms provide a lot of insight for marketers at Microsoft. They need to focus on building an online presence that targets users outside of the niche gamer industry. Where, for instance, do moms spend most of their time on Facebook? Off the top of my head, I know that moms play quite a bit of online games such as Farmville and Café World. Perhaps by targeting where moms spend their time online, they can better reach those who typically don’t know anything about video games. Additionally, I think considering that Facebook is coming out with a completely new messaging system for e-mail (combining e-mail, SMS, live conversation, etc.), Microsoft could cross into a new form of getting the word out in social media.

Overall, I think social media is a great way to reach out to people, but in the specific nature of marketing for the Kinect, they need to reach where their target audiences are present. If they want to continue winning over the gaming industry, they need to keep targeting where they are present. If it’s parents, families, moms, and dads, then some specialized marketing needs to occur. Google zeitgeist shed only surface-level analysis on where Internet users spend their time in relation to the Kinect, but social media tools can enable Microsoft and those marketing the Kinect to reach a new level of awareness and support for their newest product.

In class, we talked about social media and how there are different ways people can use the tools to do things. For instance, blogs like this one are people (in this case, me) creating content. People can collaborate, react to one another, organize content, and unlock the potential of social networking tools. I think Microsoft has a unique opportunity here because they are in a great space for home entertainment. Hopefully the Kinect will connect (sorry, I had to include the pun) the right marketing strategy with they right target audience.

Text Me a Word...

For this blog post, my class was asked to text message 2 friends the following phrase: "Working on a class project. Need you to send me the word of a random inanimate object/thing." Once we got the words, we were told to brainstorm about them and then write about them. Here are the results of my activity! Enjoy.

First word: KEYS

When I start brainstorming about the word "Keys," my first instinct is to go to the things that people carry in their pockets/purses. Keys to the house, the mail box, the car, the office, a drawer, etc. I also tend to think about how people lose their keys a lot. Keys are physical items that lock/unlock things. People also use keys to "key" a car (aka take a key and run it along the side of a car to scratch it). But, when I think about it a little more, I think about keys like things on a musical instrument--piano keys, keys on a Clarinet or Flute, etc. I also think about the islands, the Florida Keys.

Second Word: PLASTIC CUP

My first instinct makes me think about the a "Red Solo Cup," which is the kind of go-to cup for college students in terms of partying and consuming alcoholic. The next thing I think about is a sippy cup used for toddlers. Cups hold beverages and plastic cups are usually disposable/meant for a one-time use. They are also sometimes linked to the environment since they are made out of plastic.

After we wrote down our first impressions of these two items that our friends texted us, the next step in the activity was to think about different ways that we could combine the two objects. Here is my bulleted list of different ways to combine the words 'keys' and 'plastic cup':

• A plastic cup with a design where there are little cartoon keys are all over it. Also, designs of little instruments with keys or the Florida Keys on them.
• A plastic key/cup kids toy set.
• A plastic cup that has a lid requiring a key to lock/unlock it.
• A plastic cup in the shape of a container to act as a holder for keys (like a tray).
• A plastic cup themed for a trip to the Florida Keys.
• Keys with plastic cup designs on them.
• Some type of mechanism that doesn't allow you to use your keys whenever you've had a plastic cup in your hands for too long (parties).
• A plastic cup model construction of the Florida Keys.
• A piano key acting as a key to unlock the cabinet to get a plastic cup (think about it...it's genius!!)
• A game using plastic cups--you put keys under one of the cups, rearrange the order and move them around quickly, and the person has to guess what cup the keys are under.

Usually, I think of myself as relatively creative but I had some trouble with this exercise! I had to stretch my imagination and think through the two items over time to make sure that my list was a solid list of interactions between the two objects.

The final step in the activity was to think about if any of those combinations would be viable products or services. Overall, I think that a locking plastic cup may exist already. I wouldn't be surprised! With some work, I think the piano key acting as a key pad/locking/unlocking mechanism would be viable. I've heard of mechanisms of preventing drunken behavior based on having to solve simple math problems to demonstrate that you're sober, for instance, and this is a similar idea. An image could maybe populate of a line of music and you'd have to play it on a digital keyboard in order to unlock your drink cabinet that had plastic cups in it. Other than that, I wasn't a particularly huge fan of any of my other ideas. I will continue to brainstorm throughout the week and post more bullets as ideas come to me. I hope you enjoyed my brainstorm!

What ideas do you have to combine a plastic cup and keys?

What Should I Write About?

[DISCLAIMER: I copy/pasted this from Word, so some of the formatting is a bit odd again.]

One of the components of my Customer Insights class this semester is to write a research paper on a topic that is interesting to us. We are going to be linking these topics back to class concepts dealing with customer insights and experiences. I feel energized by the opportunity to share my views and opinions on something I find interesting, yet have had some difficulty in specifying what I want to talk about. Throughout the past week and a half or so, I have sat down to brainstorm ideas that I thought would make for a good topic, and at this point, I have come up with two different topics that I would like to potentially explore.
Initially, I sat down and I thought about what was interesting to me. After some whittling away at my thoughts, I came to the conclusion that social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter are fascinating to me within the world of marketing. I came across an article on MarketingProfs, an organization that, according to their website is “a rich and trusted resource that offers actionable know-how to help…market…products and services both smarter and better.” I am on multiple MarketingProfs listserves and constantly receive articles and snippets of marketing-related information from the site. One article, however, caught my eye.
In an article entitled “How to Connect with Customers on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter,” the people at MarketingProfs write about how important it is to simply have an online social media presence. From this article, I started thinking, and developed a sort of research question that I would be interested in exploring: How does the use of social media tools to create an online presence help a company develop better customer experiences and insights? In general, I am fascinated by the blurred lines between professional and recreational social interaction that is brought upon by a tool like Facebook. And, with the movie The Social Network capturing audiences everywhere, the story of Mark Zuckerberg and his journey to create one of the most powerful information tools on the web can certainly provide for some interesting analysis.
In the midst of thinking about social media, I came across an article called “‘Human Virus’ Snakes Through Twitter.” This article briefly introduced the psychological need for people on Twitter to “retweet” (aka repeat a phrase or thought to pass it along). This got me thinking about the sheer power of what social media has over users and makes me think about what it would be like to have control over such power. Ultimately, I am led back to an article that my professor gave me at the beginning of the semester called “Google: the search party is over.” This article introduces the idea about how Facebook may be able to take over Google in terms of being a top provider of information. The article writes: “Some investors also worry about Google’s ability to keep pace with consumers’ evolving use of the web. Say you want to buy running shoes to train for a marathon. Five years ago you would have simply Googled it, looked at the list of results, weighed your options, and made the purchase, perhaps by clicking on one of the sponsored links that accompanied your search. Today you might still do that, but increasingly you might pose the question “What running shoes should I buy?” to your friends on Facebook, or maybe write “Who knows about training for marathons?” on Twitter.” This concept is absolutely fascinating to me because I am so interested in exploring this new space in the technology industry. I think that understanding and helping to champion a more concrete role for social media in the workplace would lead to a huge win for any company that did it right and did it first. Thus, understanding a company’s use of social media tools as a means to connect with audiences online can certainly help develop some interesting and new insights, as well as create more unique and robust customer experiences.
While I recognize and understand that a lot of my thoughts aren’t yet quite fleshed out, I can’t help but think there’s something there. To summarize, I believe that researching the impact of social media as a tool for companies to reach consumers in an ever-changing environment would make for an interesting research paper. I believe it’s completely relevant to the concepts taught in my class because an exploration of social media lends itself to be applied to customer insights and experiences.
While I have covered the main topic that I am interested in, I did want to touch base upon another thought that did tickle my fancy when I thought about it. Two years ago, I attended the Clinton Global Initiative University conference when it was hosted on my school’s campus. One of the speakers at the conference was Blake Mycoskie, the Founder and Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS Shoes. I was completely fascinated by the business model of TOMS Shoes, as I found it to be a perfect blend of a for-profit business with a non-profit agenda. In case you aren’t familiar with TOMS Shoes, here’s a quick blurb from their website: “In 2006, American traveler Blake Mycoskie befriended children in Argentina and found they had no shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need.” I haven’t given this topic too much thought, but I believe an exploration of how companies like TOMS Shoes develop customer insights and experiences would be absolutely fascinating. I think it’s because the main customer of TOMS Shoes aren’t the people who are receiving the free pair of shoes, and I would be really interested in exploring how the marketers at TOMS Shoes engage in developing a strong customer experience. I believe using TOMS Shoes as a case study could provide for some really interesting analysis.
Overall, I recognize that I have a lot of thoughts and I simply want to share them. Whatever topic I go with (and I may think of something else later on), I know that I’ll have a fun time connecting it back to my class. I am so fortunate to be given the opportunity to share my thoughts about something that interests me, and to relate it to my major and career interests only makes the experience that much better.

Order Up!

All this week, my class has been discussing the idea of a customer experience. Products, as most people know, aren’t just about the physical products themselves. Rather, it’s about the experience the product can enable, empower, or enhance for the user. Thus, when it comes to the creation of products and services, having the experience in mind is crucial. To me, it’s such a simple concept, but so difficult to implement. It’s so easy to say, “I understand that my product or service has to serve a bigger purpose than just exist,” but it’s difficult to integrate the product or service into the lives of a consumer. I think that’s why companies who are consistently successful at this concept (companies like Apple) get this brand of innovation. This kind of consumer-placed label or conceptual framework allows the company to get away with a lot. Take, for instance, the iPad. To me, the concept of the iPad is great. It serves a niche market, is certainly useful, is relatable for wide audiences, and is just downright cool. But, in its first edition, I was disappointed (as I am by most first generation Apple products). However, everybody still wants an iPad, and I don’t blame them. The amount of prestige and the message having an iPad sends out in a social environment is great, and Apple takes advantage of the fact that everyone thinks their products are innovative, cool, and a must-have. People think they’re so fantastic that they are willing to look past the flaws (where’s the webcam? where’s the USB port?), and that’s a huge win for Apple.

In this blog post, I was asked to write about and deconstruct an experience that was particularly meaningful for me. While most of the class discussion that has occurred deals with products, my intuition told me that I wanted to talk about one of the best dining experiences I’ve ever had.

I hope that I can convey why this particular dining experience was so memorable. The best place to start is to say that I am talking about a time last year where I had dinner at an Olive Garden. There are elements about this Olive Garden that I remember vividly that certainly helped contribute to my experience. Specifically, I would like to focus on five key tenets of why my dining experience was so great.

Initially, when I went to this Olive Garden, it was at the end of a very long and exhausting speech tournament. We were in a different city (I can’t recall where, exactly) eating dinner after a long weekend. Now, speech tournaments in a nutshell are incredibly exhausting, in a physical, emotional, and mental sense. We are physically drained because of a lack of sleep, while we are emotionally drained from emotional performances and mentally exhausted from having to have intense concentration throughout the weekend. The Olive Garden experience I had consisted of what most would say was just a great dining experience, but I believe it was my specific context and environment that made it truly meaningful.

Second, the restaurant was able to seat our entire team (25-30 or so people) right when we got there, which was a huge breath of fresh air after an exhausting weekend. I sat with three of my teammates at a small booth and they all happened to be seniors. This brings me to second belief that the company I was with enhanced my experience. The conversation was great and I always laugh a lot and am in a good mood when I am with my teammates. I was immediately at ease and in a good mood.

The third tenet is that the server was awesome. He anticipated our needs before we even knew we had them, was always on top of bringing us things quickly, and understood the appropriate times to check on us. Plus, he was just a cool guy. The ability to juggle multiple tables during a busy night is a skill that I have always admired, and he had that ability on lockdown.

In addition to his sheer skill, the server gave off a genuine vibe. What I mean by this is that he seemed to truly be enjoying what he was doing and it made for a very relaxing and enjoyable evening. I think that I specifically chose the word “genuine” because it didn’t seem like he was working so hard for a tip. Instead, it really just felt like he wanted to make sure we got fed delicious food in an appropriate timeframe.

Speaking of delicious food, my fifth and final tenet deals with the fact that the food was fantastic. Now, I don’t normally think very highly of Olive Garden past the soup, salad, and breadsticks (because seriously, the soup, salad, and breadsticks at any Olive Garden is out of this world), but everything I had that night was absolutely delicious. The food was fresh, hot, and flavorful (I’m getting hungry now!). Plus, it just hit the spot.

I think that this combination of elements made for a great experience. I think you can look at this experience in a few ways: first, you can think of the food as an actual product, but the experience itself made it much better. This is certainly not a new concept, as dining in a restaurant usually entails a significant experience. However, you can also look at Olive Garden as a service. Because they take the time to seat guests, cook and provide food, and wait on customers, the restaurant business is really a service. Whatever way you look at it, I had a great time.

This experience really relates back to what we’ve been talking about in my class. I think this is a perfect example of showing that the extra effort you put in when considering a customer’s experience can really pay off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tip that big go to anyone from a group of four people. We all tipped well above 25% and even went through the trouble of asking for our server’s manager to tell him that our server was great.

In the end, the experience really does make or break the product or service. So, it is important to consider and take into account the experience in the design phase. Well, with that said, I’m off to Olive Garden! Well, by Olive Garden, I mean I’m off to class. But, I’m still thinking about those breadsticks and I hope you are, too.

Persona!

Preface: Please note that the format/font may look a little funny. It's because I copy/pasted it from Word. :-).

Dictionary.com provides two interesting definitions for the word persona. The first, a more general definition, is that a persona is “a person’s perceived or evident personality, as that of a well-known official, actor, or celebrity; personal image; public role,” while the other delves into the psychological philosophies of Carl Jung and describes it as “the mask or façade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment and not representing the inner personality of the individual; the public personality.” In this blog post, I find it important to explore both of these definitions.

Initially, to set up a framework for why I’m writing about personas, I feel that I should say that the goal of my blog post is to create a persona for me or someone like me with key nuances, opportunities, and insights for marketers to capitalize on. However, in order for me to do this successfully, I first want to quickly discuss the ideas of personas.

In the first definition, I was struck by the idea that personas are all built upon perceptions. It brings up the concept that how we are perceived is as important, if not more, than who we truly are. From a marketing perspective, I would certainly think that a person’s personal image and public role were important in the development of insights. A person’s personal image allows a marketer to get into the insecurities, vulnerabilities, and ultimately, needs of that person in order to develop a solution for problems the user may or may not know exist. On the flipside, the public role a person plays allows for a marketer to study the environment a person is in, observe how someone interacts with others around them, and develop key social implications for the way they conduct their daily activities.

In the second definition, Carl Jung and Dictionary.com describe a persona as something that does not represent the inner personality of the individual, but rather, the public personality. This concept is fascinating to me. Marketing challenges people to not only be specific down to an individual’s needs, but to also scale a concept across an entire persona to reach large amounts of people. Yet, while marketing clearly deals with a lot of psychology, the Jung definition states that a persona does not truly represent the individual. The first question that pops into my mind in response to that statement is “Does that matter?” and in the end, I don’t think it does. If a marketer is able to correctly identify the public personality of an individual and scale it across large groups of people, despite the inability for the marketer to capture the true representation of the individual, I think the marketer could still succeed.

Now that I’ve successfully ranted about my thoughts on the definition of persona, I want to begin to describe a persona that I believe represents me or people like me. One of the readings for class was a chart of Cohort Segments. Two segments jumped out as relatively representative of me when I first read them: Jason, a male student and grad who represents “Physically active, technologically inclined young men finishing school or embarking on their first job,” and Jonathan, an elite single man who represents “High-powered career-driven men with sophisticated tastes, extensive investments, and the means to travel the world.” The interesting thing is that while I currently identify best with Jason, I connected with the cohort of Jonathan because he represents something I aspire to be.

That being said, I present to you an attempt at the representation of a persona for Brendan, a 21-year-old college senior looking to enter the “real world” to find his first job.

• · Brendan has just started his final year in undergrad, a year unlike any other. His focus has continued to expand outside the classroom on securing a job.

  · He is the first to admit that sometimes, he takes too much on his plate. He participates in a lot of activities and lives by his Google Calendar.

  · He prides himself on time management, organization, and communication skills, but understands that he doesn’t have all the answers.

  · His parents got divorced when he was nine but both parents eventually got remarried. He lived with his dad and step-mother while his mom and step-father remained close-by. His freshman year of college, his dad moved to Hong Kong for a job.

  · His family dynamic has also introduced two additional step-siblings into his life. He remains closest to his brother, rather than his step-brother or step-sister.

  · His freshman year of college, his step-mother developed (and eventually defeated) breast cancer.

  · He competes heavily in collegiate competitive speech (the speech side of Speech and Debate). Thus, he spends his weekends traveling across the country instead of doing more traditional “college student activities.”

  · He tries to stay up-to-date with current events. He reads The Economist on and off and has gained exposure to contemporary issues in culture through collegiate speech. He engages in active dialogue about social issues.

  · He loves college football (namely Longhorn Football). That’s all there is to that bulletpoint.

  · He follows his instincts in terms of leadership and guidance. He cares a lot about the well-being of his friends.

  · He doesn’t wait for things to come to him; he seeks out answers and opportunities. He tries to be proactive.

  · He is quick to understand how to navigate websites in order to search/research any topic he needs the answer to. He lends these skills to help people around him.

  · He defines himself as a blend between a person with a Type A personality and a couch potato. This dichotomy is embodied in the idea that he can simultaneously watch CNN and High School Musical (1, 2, and 3).

  · He is a social person who can respect his alone time, but prefers to be around people.

  · He’s a gamer that leans towards Nintendo products. He grew up with Nintendo and loves the games of his childhood.

  · He loves to eat anything and everything. He abuses his metabolism by over-eating and has failed at every attempt to do any exercise beyond walking to class.

  · He doesn’t spend his money on much, but what he does spend his money on matters (food, gas, trips to see people, fun activities).

  I must admit that when I was typing up these bulletpoints, I had a distinct audience in mind: marketers who were studying Brendan in order to develop a strategic solution (either through a product or service) that would help make Brendan’s life easier.

  In the end, I hope you enjoyed my discussion on personas. I found myself simply rattling off universal concepts that I felt people could identify with or relate to. As I continue my journey in school, I hope to learn the nuances of translating insights (or bulletpoints) like these into tangible goods and services to improve the lives of consumers everywhere.

New Blog Title!

:),

Brendan

The Customer Insights class that I’m taking this semester offers a pretty interesting thought right off the bat: my professor writes in his syllabus that “A human-centered approach to design presents the opportunity to create products, services, and programs that can have a significant impact on our communities.” To me, a human-centered approach makes a lot of sense, and yet, it isn’t always what’s executed when companies engage in product design. It seems fascinating to learn about the evolution of marketing and design, especially given the shift from traditional products to human-centered ones that are derived from innovative ideas and thoughts.

It seems relatively straightforward, right? Deliver products and services to fit the needs of people by discovering what those needs are. If you can gear your design and research process towards those needs, you might strike gold and find the next big product. So, why have so many products and services failed at achieving just that?

One of our class readings, an article entitled Insights Into Customer Insights, talked about how customer insights revolved around gaining a truly unique understanding of consumers and turning that understanding into something that offers a competitive advantage to the company. While it sounds relatively simple, it occurred to me that this is an incredibly difficult task. How does a company know what will or will not work? How do you even begin to generate genuine customer insights? How do you get employees to think out of the box and create solutions to problems that they don’t even recognize? These are all questions that I think need to be considered for companies to excel in the very system they’re functioning within. The article goes on to talk about how employees should always ask the question “Why?” The philosophy of continual progression really resonated with me. It seems like the trick to being truly innovative is that you can’t ever just be satisfied with meeting needs. Rather, you have to exceed those needs and produce a slam-dunk idea, product, or service.

Another one of our class readings was to explore the IDEO HCD (Human-Centered Design) Toolkit. While this document was incredibly long, the key takeaways were so easy to digest and really got my thoughts going. IDEO defines human-centered design as “a process and set of techniques used to create new solutions for the world.” They suggest that the process for human-centered design is to “Hear, Create, [and then] Deliver.” It sounds so easy when it’s put like that, but each one of those phases is incredibly difficult to do right. I read an article the other day about Samsung and LG phones. The article discussed how the two companies hired new design specialists to focus on improving their mobile devices. HCD clearly applies in the case of mobile phones. In an era of smartphones, iPhones vs. Androids, and more, it’s clear that the company who dominates (arguably Apple as of recent times, who, even with the highly-publicized flawed iPhone 4, continues to create buzz) the market is the one that resonates the most with the consumer. Apple does a phenomenal job of creating devices that, as my professor pointed out in class, work the way you think they would work. That concept in it of itself has prevented other tech giants from getting it right.

The other day, we had a discussion in class about what happened to the music industry. In relation to another article we read in class titled From major to minor, the concept was to really discuss what music companies did well and could have done better to anticipate the wide change in how people get their music. We had an interesting discussion about the motivations for pirating music and talked about where the industry fell short. While I don’t consider myself a huge music buff, the discussion itself was really interesting to me because it got at a bigger issue: what is the future going to look like and what can we do now to anticipate how technology will change? Technology is a huge interest of mine and I hope to get my career started in the industry. However, if this class has taught me anything so far, it’s that product design is so vital to success and there are many different ways to think about design. These concepts are especially crucial in the technology industry and I see such value in thinking critically about the issues that come along with the ideas.

On Monday, we had a guest speaker come to our class named Jeff. Jeff talked a lot about the history and philosophy behind design and mentioned some key names of people who have gotten the design philosophy right over the years. I wanted to point out a philosophy that really caught my eye. It’s a quotation by Henry Dreyfus, who said, “If people are made safer, more comfortable, more eager to purchase, more efficient, or just happier, the designer has succeeded.” Jeff pointed out the Dreyfus quotation to highlight the idea that a more human-centered approach began to emerge in the 1930’s and 40’s. For me, there were several interesting ideas about this statement. First of all, it suggests that the designer and the people are separate entities and thus raises the question: can the designer ever truly satisfy the people if they are looked at as an “other” rather than being seen as one of the people? Another idea is that if success is based on intangible results such as happiness, a completely subjective metric of success, did these human-centered designers ever feel satisfied? If they made someone happy, how did they know they couldn’t have made them even happier with a better product? How good is good enough? Finally, I was so intrigued by the phrase “more eager to purchase” within the quotation. It really got at the heart of human-centered design: if you create a product that creates demand and thus, increases a consumer’s eagerness to purchase, the designer has certainly succeeded from a business standpoint.

Well, these are all of my initial thoughts about how a design philosophy is relatively straightforward, yet difficult to nail. I hope that I didn’t ramble on too much and would love to hear your thoughts about anything I’ve written about! Until next time, my fellow blog readers, I bid you adieu.

Welcome!

Hello!

This semester, I am taking a Marketing elective at my university entitled "Customer Insights and Experiences." Each student in this class was asked to create and maintain a blog about the class. That being said, I am here to share my thoughts about various topics discussed in class with all of you.

While I have yet to enter the "real world", I hope to bring some value to the marketing world by honestly giving my thoughts about different fascinating topics.

The title of this blog is a work in progress. I don't plan to keep the name as "Customer Insights Blog," but a more witty and pun-like title has not yet come to me. Stay tuned for a better title soon.

Here's to a great semester!

-Brendan