Finally, I can say I made it! And
I really enjoyed it a lot. I am taking about finishing my Customer Insights course.
I admit that this course was kind of a challenge for me and a chance to change
some of my paradigms. Being an Engineer without any previous background in
marketing (besides the core course) it was not the kind of classes that I was
used to. However the name of the course kept my attention when I received the
classes available for me as an exchange student. After the first day of classes
when the content of the course was presented I was totally on board. Later on, after
learning about the project for Nordstrom I felt I received a premium in the
course. I never had the opportunity of visit any Nordstrom store before. I had read
about their legendary customer experience and quality on service in some classes
before, but I always wanted to know what they meant about that. I might say
that most of the topics that we covered were new for me, however one of my
favorites was the concept of “creating a persona” and the empathy map tool. During
the first phase of the project we worked with the empathy map in order to brainstorm
ideas of how would be our target customer and her environment. This was a very
helpful tool for the team to contribute with different ideas from our own
experiences and try to picture how would be like to walk in the shoes of this hypothetical
customer would represent our target. I found that it was very powerful to have
a clear idea of the customer, not only the traditional marketing segmentation
but also her feelings, influences, motivations and pains. Using images made
things even easier to brainstorm ideas and create this persona. Developing this
American girl named Cyndi helped me to understand her better, to know about her
concerns and constraints. Almost automatically we started to find ways for how
to make her life easier.
Another tool that was not precisely
new for me but we used slightly different was the rapid prototyping. I had the
idea that prototyping was to create products very close to the final products
and almost fully functional. However by using rapid prototypes was a very
useful way to explain our product propositions. When we were using the rough prototypes
in paper with our participants it was clear to us that many times the customers
cannot explain what they want, however they can easily tell you what they don’t
want. By using these insights is easier to discard ideas and focus on the
development of a refined prototype containing only the features and
characteristics that were more appealing to the customers. The rapid
prototyping is an excellent way to save time by not developing products or
ideas that the market is not interested.
If I have to choose one concept
that was least useful for the project I would say that it was the Business
Model Canvas. I think this tool is very useful when developing business ideas
or concepts. However in the case of this project it was not that easy to use it
since we did have not enough understanding of the entire Nordstrom business model.
We were trying to find information that would be available out there on which
were the Nordstrom partners for instance, but it was not possible to find enough
information about it. Also we were not sure about the key resources at
Nordstrom for the mobile and online channel however we used assumptions
instead. I would say this tool may work better when we have a better understanding
and more information.
During this project I had
different emotions and thoughts. At the very beginning , when we were given the
paper explaining the structure and scope of the project I was very excited because
it was not another school project only; there were people from Nordstrom
interested on the results, which made it very interesting. Then the first team
meeting came and I felt kind of lost, my team seemed they were very integrated
already, but me, I was trying to get used to the new school, country and topic
and making my best to connect with them. During this first meeting they were discussing
and working very hard and fast but I barely understood what was happening; it
was clear to me that they knew a lot about the topic. However in the following
meetings I was able to catch up with them and understand the concepts we
discussed in class, they were very supportive with me all the time. I would say
that I learned a lot in the class but also I learned lot from my teammates. During
the second phase of the project we lost a little bit the tracks when we turned
our deliverable, the project was a little bit messy and we did not get a good
result. However after we meet with the professor everything was clearer and we
were able to continue with the project. This second phase deliverable might be
improved by expanding the explanations and guidelines; I think this is one of
the most important parts of the project and would be valuable to make sure
everything is clear and how the deliverable should look like. In the third phase
of the project I enjoyed the evaluation of the insights, especially our visit
to the store and shop-along experience. I was fun and interesting to sit in the
store and watching the behavior of people and talk to them later on. Also the
coordination with the team was great and we were able to evaluate the insights
from our own perspectives. By the end of the project I felt satisfied with our
final result, the tool and features that were in the final product were very
interesting and we thought these would help our customer to make her life
easier. Also the fact of presenting videos was very nice; especially for us
that we had the professional help from Christine.
My final conclusion is that I
really enjoyed this class, the project with Nordstrom and being working with a
very good team. I find this new knowledge will be very helpful for me in the
future.
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