User Research — Chapter 5 Reflection

For my class in IMM 280 at The College of New Jersey, our class is separated into groups and each group need to come up with a project that can benefit the businesses in downtown Trenton. The three main users for the Trenton project are the workers at City Hall, current and potential businesses in downtown, and the customers of those businesses. My initial assumption was that it would be easy to find out what the city and its businesses would want or need. I would just survey some businesses and interview them, asking what they were looking for. However, after reading the chapter, I realized the fault with this logic. I would never be able to get a real, and straightforward answer out of the businesses as they would deflect the question with a light, nice answer. They would do this to both appeal to the interviewer and portray the business in a positive light, rather than something so negative.

I decided to try out some different tactics in order to better understand my user’s needs. When we went into Trenton to interview, I would ask them about certain topics, like crime, and how it affected the area and their own business. I would also ask them about various topics to see if they lacked something, like social media. After listening to the business owner’s stories, what they think of the city, and how their business is doing, I was able to come up with ideas for a project that would fill in the gap for a lot of what these businesses lacked. This is where I felt very successful, as I understood who the users truly were and answers to problems they didn’t necessarily see. I could only get that from not only interviewing them, but also be listening to their stories and understanding the city a bit better.