Dish Three: Discover Phase

 

Lessons From Developing a Project Scope

There's a pretty important rule in design thinking that my team and I kept forgetting when creating our project idea: come up with a problem first, not the solution.  We knew we wanted to focus on the fast food industry, but initially just kept thinking up solution after solution.  So, why was this method so difficult for me?  I think it has something to do with the fact that I thought I already understood what customers wanted.  In truth, though, I knew nothing.  I hadn't done any research or observing yet, but was instead making assumptions based on my own experience and feelings.  However, I'm just one person, and I'm not even part of the target market...it was silly of me to forget empathy and focus on myself!

As I began my project in Advertising & Digital Marketing (shortly after the scope was due), I thought to myself, I need to keep our problem in mind, and not get too caught up in finding an answer...otherwise it may not even be an answer anybody wants!  The result?  My advertising team and I were able to identify a major problem with our company's operations, design a specific goal, and now we are well on our way to completing a creative solution plan to achieve it!  If we hadn't remembered to focus on the problem first, we probably would have ended up with a much duller (not to mention ineffective) advertising strategy.

Lessons From Research 

Our research consisted of both traditional, secondary research and a netnography, the latter of which I hadn't done before.  These steps were my least favorite because I was extremely overwhelmed by the quantity of information available---especially the quantity of unwanted information.  I wanted to focus on sources from the US, published within the last couple years, but my searches were spitting results from as far back as 2005 and as far away as Japan.  Thankfully, I got the opportunity to listen to Anna Milholland, head of the McLeod Business Library.  She explained how we could utilize generative AI to assist in our research, and that completely changed the game for us. While we knew better than to completely depend on Bing's GPT feature, we were able to find relevant sources a lot quicker than we did when scrolling through dozens of databases.

And yes, I was absolutely a ChatGPT skeptic at first...I viewed it as almost a lazy way to get work done.  Except we weren't using it to do our work for us, we were using it to be more efficient, and there's a big difference.  When my Advertising professor recommended we use Bing, I didn't hesitate.  With the practice I got in Customer Insights, my team was able to quickly find resources to use for both our SWOT and PEST analysis.

It was also during the research phase that we realized we should shift some of our focus to children.  While specific adult groups are still our target market (since they're the ones paying, after all), we realized that children were a large factor in the customer decision-making process.  Our focus was previously on operational processes, take-out vs dining in frequency, and budget preferences, but we realized we should extend our thinking to include questions like: What kinds of aesthetic elements attract elements attract children to restaurants?  What kinds of food to children tend to ask for the most?  How often do adult let children pick the dining location?  As we moved forward to begin our observations and interviewing, we decided to officially edit our project scope to take into account the preferences of children.   

Lessons From Field Observations

I went to Chick-fil-a and Cava for my field observations, and I will admit right off the bat that the biggest challenge was continuing to pay attention to others' experience, while also going through the dining experience myself.  For one thing, the mac n cheese at Chick-fil-a is delicious.  It's very hard to listen to what other people are saying about their food when you're enjoying this:

But more importantly, I was trying to make sure I followed the employee's drive-thru instructions, tapped my credit card correctly, and got my plasticware with my meal.  At Cava, I was so frustrated at how long the line was taking, that I forgot the observe if other people seemed to feel the same way.  However, my observations at Chick-fil-a are a lot more in-depth, and I think that's because I observed customers for about 45 minutes before I started going through the experience myself.  In the future, my plan is to refrain from ordering any food until I have focused on observing for at least 30 minutes!  

Lessons From Interviews

Okay, let's get this over with: I shouldn't have interviewed my mom.  I didn't consider why it wouldn't be the best idea beforehand, but in hindsight...I could've picked a different interviewee (I made up for this one with my second interview, though!).  The biggest issues were that with every question I asked, I was trying to guess her response in my head, and that I developed a habit of tailoring questions based on my personal knowledge of her.  When interviewing a distant friend, on the other hand, I had no idea what to expect.  As a result, I found myself landing into topics and asking questions I never thought I would reach.  For example, I somehow went from asking about dietary restrictions for background info purposes, to learning the psychological reasons behind why my interviewee feels the need to have meat with every single meal, no matter the context or time of day.   

Lesson learned: the less you already think you know about the person and their experience in the topic, the better the interview will be.  True curiosity will lead to better information!