A Semester's Worth of Experience

Generative Research

As soon as I heard Professor Walls utter the term “Generative Research,” I found myself thinking about the psychology class I had in 10th grade and the research paper I had to write for it. I had no idea what “generative” meant. All I knew was that that term sounded incredibly academic and even a bit boring. I wasn’t at all excited about this topic. Once we started learning the basics of generative research, I still didn’t quite understand it or how it was supposed to work within the corporate environment. I got that this type of research was a process in which researchers elicited subjects’ emotions, but I was skeptical of how well it would work. The goal of the method is to get people to reveal their true ideas, values, and feelings through different techniques such as photo collages, journal entries, exercises, and/or photo journals. I thought that either people would catch on to these research techniques and try to deceive the researchers, or the subjects wouldn’t quite be able to understand what it was that the researchers were wanting from them. Although there is a certain amount of risk due to bias (as there is with any kind of research), our group’s experience with generative research helped me to see that this method really can and does work, and it provides corporations with invaluable information that they would not have otherwise had through traditional research alone.

Our group decided to have our participants create two different photo collages for our generative portion of the research. With a set number of random pictures cut from magazines, we had our participants first create a collage that depicted how they currently feel in their home office space. Participants were free to choose or exclude whichever pictures they wanted to, and they were free to arrange them in any way. Afterwards, we talked to the participants about the collages that they had created in an attempt to better understand the meanings behind different pictures and the way in which the pictures were organized. Once we spoke to them about their first collages, we asked our participants to create another collage depicting how they would like to feel in an ideal office space. Again, we asked questions to better understand our participants’ choices.

By using this method, we were able to connect with our participants on a deeper level – a deeper than that of our traditional survey. Emotions such as constraint, disorder, and frustration were obtained through the first collage, and emotions such as order, relief, and control were obtained through the second collage. I, along with my group members, was able to see firsthand that this type of research is both successful and extremely valuable. We were able to create a product that addressed these emotions, and companies are able to use the research in the same manner. Companies can use this kind of research to improve products, create new products, and improve customer experiences.

Rapid Prototyping

When I was in fifth grade, my school’s Talented and Gifted program had an invention competition. I was bewildered by the idea of creating a new product. Twenty two years later, I found myself in the practically the same boat. However, this time I was in a much bigger boat – a boat that I needed. I needed this boat to get me to graduation! With my idea of how the product creation process worked, I had no idea how it would be possible to find subjects, gather research, create a rapid prototype, get feedback, and create a final prototype within only one semester. I thought that each step of this process would take several months or even years. And then we were told that these rapid prototypes should only take a few hours (max) to make. Very similar to my early thoughts of generative research, I was skeptical of the ease with which a rapid prototype could be built and also how significant this rapid prototype would be to the overall process. I don’t know if my group members were as frightened as I was, but I was hoping that this project wouldn’t turn out as horribly as did my fifth grade project.

Our team met the day prior to the rapid prototyping day in class to discuss possible product ideas. This meeting was a lot of fun and we eventually agreed on several characteristics and features that our product needed to have. We sketched up a drawing, and then we considered ourselves to be as prepared as possible for the next day! Our rapid prototype didn’t take very long to make, and we used a shoe box, tape, and paper to create it. The materials were cheap, and the construction was simple. Our rapid prototype brought our ideas to life!

It was then that I realized the true benefits to creating a rapid prototype. This prototype was very cheap, which is key when creating a first iteration of a product. We knew that we were probably going to have to make several changes to the first prototype in order to address our participants’ feedback. The function of a cheap prototype would be even more significant for a large company trying to create something to take to market. The purpose of the “rapid” in rapid prototyping was to ensure that a minimal amount of effort was put into creating something that will almost certainly need to be remade many times. It was definitely awesome to see our ideas and shoebox-ingenuity come together and form a prototype that we could then take out to our participants.

Deciding on a Persona

Initially, I thought that our group’s decision on a specific persona would have a huge impact on our project. While it may have made a huge impact on other teams’ projects, I do not think that our project was very sensitive to the persona that we decided to use. We thought that having children would provide much of the strife that came with using an office space at home; however, we found that most participants were more concerned with the clutter that they had, and this clutter was, in many cases, independent of the children.

With that being said, I do understand the benefits and function behind selecting a persona for a project such as this one. Our team had easy access to people that matched our persona, and it provided certain perimeters/limits for the project. I appreciate the need to have limits or more specifications on a project – I am a person that prefers highly structured assignments and projects. I wouldn’t say that this portion of the project is unnecessary or it that it should be done away with, but I would say that this aspect did not hold as much value for me personally as did other parts of the project.

Blood, Tears, and Fun

I loved this project! I am able to better understand things and, more importantly, retain things if I am able to experience them firsthand or actually put those things to use. Being able to apply almost everything that we learned in class to a project that we were working on during that same semester was very beneficial to me. I feel like this project was a great tool to use in order to hit home the concepts that we learned in class.

This project was personally challenging on many levels. As I mentioned before, I reverted to a terrified eleven-year old when I heard about the project ahead. Working with a group definitely made me feel a less nervous. Discussing crazy product ideas with other people helped me to become more confident about expressing ideas. As you might be able to tell by looking at my class participation grade, I do not speak up very often. I was initially intimidated by being an MPA student in a group with two MBA students, but this actually helped me step up my game!

Our project also provided me with the opportunity to be less afraid of humiliation. After stabbing myself with scissors, fainting for the first time, crying in front of my class and professor, and needing to refuse emergency services after EMTs and a stretcher were already on-scene, I’m pretty sure that the chances of me being more humiliated in an academic or professional setting are slim! =) This ordeal is now quite funny to me, and it makes for a great “you’ll never guess how I got this scar” story.

In all honesty, I took this class because I knew that Professor Walls was teaching it. He was my professor for the undergraduate marketing class, and I loved how he made the subject matter interesting and relevant. I greatly enjoyed this class (much more than the undergraduate class for some reason), and I am very grateful for the experience that I have gained and will take away from this course. I also will be much more careful when using scissors from here on out!