The final step of the design thinking process was one of my favorite parts because we finally had a prototype that we were excited about, but we were not married to all aspects of it yet. I think what made this process so successful and enjoyable was keeping a general open mind throughout. As a generally more sensitive person who can occasionally take constructive criticism as a personal attack on my character, I felt that I was able to grow in these pitch opportunities by inviting as much feedback as possible.
NEW
The ability to present our group’s concept multiple times in a row was a new experience for me because I did not realize how much I would refine what I was saying as time went on. I saw it as such an organic pitch, more so a conversation, because I was constantly altering it based on the feedback and questions I was receiving. I have never done a project like this before, so it was unfamiliar to give a pitch explaining the prototype and on top of that utilize the limited time I had with a prospective consumer audience. Only after Professor Luchs’ comment to think of it more as an interview than a sales pitch helped us gauge their opinions over selling the concept. I also did not realize it was okay to not have all the answers to my peers’ questions about the concept. I realized it is definitely human nature to feel like we need to respond quickly to many things to show that we are prepared and competent, but it is not beneficial to do so if it is something that we hadn’t discussed before.
USEFUL
Going off of what I was discussing before, I found it helpful to think of taking questions as an opportunity to actually interview the person asking it. It was really useful to ask them “why did this come to mind?” or “can you elaborate?” and always validate them by thanking them for that great question or feedback that I had not thought of before. For instance, someone asked me, “what if I don’t like my customized mix?” I initially only thought to respond by saying unfortunately you would just need to pay for a new mix another time, but instead I pressed them. I asked, “why did you ask this?” and “did you have something in mind to deal with this potential problem?” This was far more productive than just trying to come up with an answer on the spot because my group had not thought about a sample system before. From this feedback on Tuesday, we were able to incorporate the idea of sampling into our Thursday and Friday class pitches.
CHALLENGING
The most difficult part of the evaluate process was pitching to men who were not the current or future intended target market for the product. It was a lot easier to engage woman who generally use skin care products daily because they knew what the user experience is and are part of the normal clientele. However, many of these men were able to offer a different perspective that we had not considered being an all female group that were users of Olay. One of the executive partner’s asked great questions about the thought process behind our container design because he did pointed out that many of Olay’s containers are not like that. I thought this was valuable because consumers do not like drastic change, and this was something we had not fully considered when debating the tube versus screw top design. It was also difficult to synthesize all the feedback forms from Friday and decide which improvements we would make to our concept. There were many great ideas, but we had to chose only a couple to focus on because our group is going for depth or breadth.
SURPRISING
In this same vein, even though I knew we were getting some great suggestions on Friday, I did not realize the sheer quantity of different ideas. Many of them followed similar patterns of thinking, but we still had at least about 10 ideas in each box of the feedback chart. Until reading many of the forms, I did not consider how much we were building off of what Olay already has, like its skin advisor quiz. I really liked someone pointing that out because much of this innovation experience taught me that we don’t need to “re-invent the wheel,” we can improve it. Also two of the other class’ groups did personal care companies and had a similar concept of the dispenser and container. Yet, we all had different environmental reasoning behind what was the best eco-material for the reusable container. This made me think of our activity on whether plastic or paper bags are better for the environment by going through different criteria. I think it would have been useful to flesh out a chart for our group when doing the material research because what I learned from the bag activity is that often our preconceived notions about what is best for the planet are actually incorrect.