Classroom activities
- Get to know the principles of customer interview. See the material (sub-page).
Additional reading on:
- Design Thinking – bring your idea to life based on how real users think, feel and behave
- Key terms in market and technology research
- Ideal customer and customer segment research
If all the reading seems too much, divide the units among yourself, and set a meeting to share what you have learned.
How to research the market?
What are the competitive products on the market? Use your phone or web browser when you do your research. Ask and answer these questions related to your product:
1) Has anyone else made a similar product? Yes or no?
If yes: Open a new document and make a list. If you did a web search; copy and paste the links in the document. If you found them on your phone, save the names in the document and also try and find some official website and save those links.
If no: If you can’t find anything similar to your product, then it’s time that you worked on your prototype and sketch. Once you have a stronger image of your idea, try to research a specific part of your design and see if that will help you find something in the market.
2) What makes your product same with the ones you found and what makes them different? Look at function and form. Do they look alike? Do they have the same buttons or do they work the same way? List at least 3 similarities and differences in your document.
3) Share your notes with your teammates and discuss what you have found out. Discuss the following questions:
– do we have many competitive products? if yes, what makes our product different and better?
– what useful features did you notice about the similar products that inspired you? would something like that be necessary for our product as well?
How to do a customer interview?
DOWNLOAD Customer_interview_questions (apps and other solutions) (.docx).
- Send your interview questions to your mentor, and discuss them at the mentor meeting
- Also, discuss who to have the interviews with (Every team member should interview at least one person. As you will not have very many interviews it is important to choose carefully who to speak to, in order to get as much information as possible)
- improve your interview plan based on the mentor´s feedback
- Send your interview plan and questions to your mentor, and discuss them at your meeting
- improve your interview plan based on mentor´s feedback
- Talk about your plan with your mentor. Mentor meeting tips are below
- Do check-out with your team
Team task (during student team meeting)
- Do check-in with your team
- Discuss how would your team plan the market research and customer interviews. You should do at least 4 interviews.
- Practice sharing and defining tasks – who does what (market research, customer interview questions, contacting the mentor, feedback to others)?
- Agree on tasks and deadlines – who does what by when?
Interviews should be done by the next class meeting.
Team task (home assignment)
- Follow the customer interview and market research plan that you agreed during your meeting. Show your results to your mentor and teacher.
- Add information to your idea onepager based on your interviews and research. Send it to your teacher and mentor.
Classroom activities
- Share the results of your team’s onepager with your classmates
- Ask questions and give feedback to others´ onepagers
- Analyze your results and feedback you received from your mentor and classmates
Team task (during student team meeting)
- Do check-in with your team
- Discuss how the market research and client interviews go. Did you have time to do them? How was your teamwork? Were the tasks shared equally?
- What was your teacher’s feedback to your onepager?
- What was your mentor’s feedback to your onepager?
- What are your plans for the holidays?
- Do check-out with your team
Mentor meeting
Set a meeting with your mentor, to discuss the following two topics:
- Market research and Idea onepager (also see the team task below)
- try to research the market by yourself, and if you need advice (what exactly to search for? what would be the right channels to search? what keywords could be searched?) tell the mentor about your thoughts and ask his/her advice
- if you have done your market research already, sent the results to your mentor and ask his/her feedback
- complete the market research based on mentor´s feedback and write a report OR just add information about competitive products to your team´s idea onepager
- Customer interviews
Second mentor meeting – Guidelines for mentors