Sprint 2 was inspired by the need to know our target group and end-users better. To get into their shoes and see what they think about smart technology. To achieve that, we created a following sprint goal: to define TG needs, wants & values by interviewing and testing prototypes to be able to build further concepts.
Good questions are 99% of the interview
We started this sprint with the idea that we did not know enough about our Target Group. So we decided to start with figuring out the TG’s needs, wants and values by doing interviews with them. Laura already made a list of possible Interview questions for the sessions so coming up with questions did not take that much time. The questions were, generally speaking, mostly about: sustainability, smart technology, privacy, functions & usage and the prototypes that we made in Sprint 1. We’ve noticed that it’s very hard to create open questions, so that you don’t influence the respondent, and be clear/explicit at the same time.
Contacting TG: it’s all about networking
Our target group was tiny tidy office decision makers and CEO’s. It means, that arranging interviews is a huge activity on it’s own – business people (and startups especially) are known for their lack of time and interest to anything else, than their business. Therefore we contacted a number of companies through different channels and sources: personal connections, Eneco target group list and even meetups. The whole task of contacting and arranging the date and time took about a week, but we succeeded in finding 6 willing respondents.
The art of interviewing
The second week of the sprint was full of interviews. Starting on Monday and finishing on Friday. It took a lot of energy and effort but was a lot of fun. Getting out of your comfort zone and really trying to start up a conversation or discussion about energy usage was very fulfilling. Also actually talking with people from our Target Group was satisfying, now we could really start getting to know the users that we were designing for. But, we also noticed that it was hard to get concrete answers from our respondents without influencing them too much. That balance was very hard to keep.
Uncovering patterns
Analyzing data started by transcribing interviews. When we had it written in text, we highlighted answers and insights that were relevant for us and interviewees – we made sure to find the major insights as objectively as possible without “cherry picking”. When we all became familiar with the content of interviews and started to see patterns, we tried to categorize ideas and insights using post-it notes. This method proved to be effective in organizing huge amounts of subjective and qualitative data and making it understandable. Next step – visualising it.
Show, don’t tell
After we transcribed the 6 interviews we started to make the raw data for the infographic to make the results visible. We looked at the transcriptions and did a session with the whole group where we divided the results in different topics. We used post-its to make the first structure.
After filtering and connecting the insights, we made nine main insights and requirements for the concept. This was actually the wireframe for the infographic. We started after that by creating the graphic style and layout of the infographic. Its been made in portret perspective with yellow as primary color and black, grey and white as secondary color. The most attention the infographic needed to have was the title and the nine main insights. It’s been designed on A2 format.
The concept of the graphic is sort of a flow-chart where you can follow different paths to certain information from top to bottom using circles, lines and rectangles. The title is very catchy and good to recognize from a distance. It has the main attention. Below that we define our target group. The main insights are connected with each other and they also have a few small quotes that we took from the transcripts.
Under the insights you will find three categories; data & privacy, medium and feedback & functionality. These are a summary based on usability of the potential concept. This was gathered by doing our prototype testing during the interviews.
Overall, we found 9 major needs, that interviewees related to, but we know that there is much more – we just need to find them!