Blog 6 - Project Reflections - Due 3-May

Here is your final blog assignment. Notice the extension of 1 day for the deadline (and getting it in by 11:59 PM on May 3rd is fine).

For this one, I'd like you to spend some time reflecting on the Insight/Experience Audit & Prototype group project that you have been working on all semester. This blog is fairly structured, so please read and consider this one before completing your blog entry. This is your last one, so enjoy it! (oh, remember that you only need to complete 5 out of the 6 total)

First Paragraph

Pick one main idea, core concept, topic, or skill (or a combined set of any of those) from this course that you believe you understand better as a result of working on this group project. Describe what it is and give a specific example of how the project helped you gain a better understanding of it.

Second Paragraph

Pick another main idea, core concept, topic, or skill (or a combined set of any of those) from this course that you believe you understand better as a result of working on this group project. As above, describe what it is and give a specific example of how the project helped you gain a better understanding of it.

Third Paragraph

What part of the project was not useful or do you feel like was not of value in working on this group project. As above, describe as best you can and provide specific examples.

Fourth Paragraph

Lastly, describe the emotional reactions you had along the way as you worked on this project. Reflect on the experiences you had with your teammates, the instructor (me), and the process of the project. Do you feel like working with your group contributed to your learning and/or enjoyment of this material? Explain why or why not.

Blog 5 - Ethics of Insights - Due 11-Apr

For your 5th blog, I'd really like to read your views about personal privacy in this digital world.  This is an especially important topic for marketers to consider since we are most often, now, the ones who are asking for, using, and, ultimately, responsible for people's (including our customer's) data.  

I've decided to leave this topic very broad so that you can write on whatever strikes your interest.  The constraint I will add is that you will need to reference one or both of the articles on this topic (I added another article to Blackboard titled, "A Web Pioneer Profiles Users by Name," in addition to the article on Apple & Google tracking users on mobile devices).  Again, you only need to reference at least one of those in your response.  

The problem for me is that I don't believe enough marketers have thought enough about this topic so that they understand their ethical boundaries in their own marketing practices.  Read and give it some thought before you start writing (or at least come back to the blog at least a second time to make it better).  I'm so curious to read where you all fall on this issue.

Blog 4 - Creativity - Due 25-Mar

For this blog, I would like for you to read one additional, more recent article about creativity.  There have been a number of assertions and many pages of research about creativity and there still seems to be a good bit of debate about what makes people and organizations more creative (and, then, assumedly, more innovative).  This latest article appeared in the Wall Street Journal just over a week ago and provides another take on the topic.  

How to be Creative by Jonah Leher (WSJ)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203370604577265632205015846.html

The response for this is a bit more open than the previous blog topics.  Overall, I want to hear your thoughts about creativity and innovation as an individual and within organizations.  Here are some questions you can consider, but you can address other issues related to this topic if you have other things to say on this.

1.  What are you personal experiences with individual creativity?  Have you had times when you felt especially creative or, even, especially uncreative?

2.  What are your personal experiences with organizational creativity?  Have you worked at companies that felt or behaved in ways that made them more creative or, even, especially uncreative?

3.  Do you think you, as an individual, are even capable of being creative by yourself?  And, better yet, do you think a group within an organization is capable of being creative?  

4.  What do you think about this article and the way this author describes different creative types of problems and, thus, different creative processes?  Should we trust ourselves just to know or sense when we need one type of approach versus another?

As always, please keep the blog guidelines in mind, which are posted in top right column of the page.

Blog 3 - Paper Topic - Due 24-Feb

This next blog is an opportunity for you to explore your paper topic. This is not a final contract on your topic - you can certainly change your topic after you right this. The whole point of this blog is to explore the topic enough so that you and I feel comfortable about your ability to create a full paper out of it. Here is what I would like to see included:

- Idea for the topic, fleshed out as much as possible - this can also include all the questions you have about the topic at this point. Use the blog as a brainstorming session for yourself to get your ideas out there and make this a first attempt at organizing your thoughts around the topic.

- Why is this topic interesting to you? Remember: this is a big goal for the assignment!

- What is the connection to the gathering and identification of customer insights and/or the design of valuable customer experiences? (at least, as you see it right now)

- Cite and briefly describe at least one article that is related to your topic (this can be either an academic article or trade article, at this point). Do your best to find an article that might be a central source or guidepost for your paper.

Do not forget the minimum length guidelines. Also, try NOT to write in sentence fragments, although a list here and there is fine.

I will be reading all of these posts so that I can provide feedback on what you have thus far.

Have fun with it!

Blog 2 - Qualitative Research of Online Social Behavior - Due 15-Feb

Well, this one might be a challenge, but I'm really curious to see what you do with this and I hope you have fun with it.

One of the big areas of insights right now for marketers is the whole social media scene.  We will try to spend some time in class talking about and checking into some of the quantitative data that can be pulled.  So, I'd like you to think about you might get at interesting insights about social media use (or interesting insights about people that you extract from their social media use, if that distinction makes sense), using a more qualitative approach.

What information would you try to elicit?

How would you get at that information in a way that would be most accurate and telling?

You can do this for yourself as the targeted research participant, the person you created a persona for on your blog, or the persona for your Nordstrom project.

I know this is vague and lacks direction, but that is kind of the point on this one.  I'll try to talk about this a little more on Monday, but I want you to the thinking about it before then, if you can.

Again, remember the guidelines for blogs (which you can find towards the top of this site) and have fun with it.  Really push yourself to think and write as much as you can on this one.

Blog 1 - Creating a Persona - Due Feb. 6

Well, here it is... your first blog topic. Think about the kind of information that a marketer would need to create a detailed and rich persona of someone you know fairly well, but who does not fit within your segmentation profile (skeleton).  The goal is to play with a tool that is intended to help you begin to gain empathy for someone who has a background and/or experiences that are different from yours.  With that in mind, choose someone who is more than 5 years younger or older, not your gender, and is not in the MBA or MPA program (or just finished or about to enter).  Beyond that, I'll let you figure out if the person is dissimilar enough from you to benefit from the exercise (so there is no need to clear your choice with me or Joanna).  

Keep in mind that this is public blog and that it is probably best not to use real names, so consider using an alias for the person. I'd be curious to know your relationship with this person, but if you have any concerns that they might read this and be upset, you can certainly choose not to tell me that.

With that in mind, create a persona for this person in a way that would be very valuable for marketers. Remember, what we are looking for here are detailed and nuanced descriptions about them that would lead a marketer to discover or identify key insights.  Of course, what you provide may just be the first nugget and the researcher might have to dig deeper to uncover the real insight, but the information you provide should be a great start.

To give you structure, I would like you to use the Empathy Map in the creation of your persona (which is on our class slides, the Business Model Generation book, and I also describe it below without the visual canvas).  I will also encourage you to use this in your project. The Empathy Map has 6 sections (numbered) and sub questions (bulleted) for you to consider:

1. What does he or she think and feel?

-- what really counts?

-- major preoccupations?

-- worries & aspirations?

2. What does he or she see?

-- environment?

-- friends?

-- what the market offers?

3. What does he or she say and do?

-- attitude in public?

-- appearance?

-- behavior towards others?

4. What does he or she hear?

-- what friends say?

-- what bosses say?

-- what influencers say?

5. What are his or her pain points?

-- Fears?

-- Frustrations?

-- Obstacles?

6. What does he or she hope to gain?

-- Wants/needs?

-- Measures of success?

-- Obstacles?

Please remember the length requirements for blogs as well as the grading criteria (all of which are available in the syllabus and on this class blog home page). Have fun with it!