Blog #3 - Discover Phase

 I enjoyed the Discover Phase of our Design Thinking process, including the Secondary Research, Observation, and Interviewing work we conducted. Certain parts of this phase were easier than others for me. I was able to play into my strengths for some, but for others, I had to push myself to get out of my comfort zone. 

I felt like I was able to complete the secondary research phase well. My team started by creating a list of questions we needed answered, then researched on our own, and finally came together to triangulate our findings. I am experienced in conducting secondary research, and I consider it one of my strengths. I enjoy the formulaic nature of creating questions we want answers to and then finding those answers through data. I do secondary research often in my psychology work. However, a challenge I faced in our class was that I was researching in a nonscientific field, which I am not as familiar with. We focused on home furnishings, so I was looking at industry trends and customer testimony data rather than hard quantitative facts and past scientific experiments. However, the secondary research overall is something I enjoy and know I am good at.  

I found the observation stage a bit harder. My group did two observations: in the field and online. The online one was relatively simple because it felt less intrusive. We would poke around blogs and look at reviews that people had posted to be read. The field research was harder because I was balancing getting as much data as possible while also not being creepy or overbearing so I didn't disrupt the environment. One thing that I loved about doing field research, though, is that we got to naturally observe how people acted and shopped. Sometimes, people are not as forthcoming when they are online or behind a screen. We were able to understand how people browsed for home furnishings and if there were patterns to people's actions. One thing I particularly found interesting was that in stores like Target, where home furnishings are just one of the many items sold, the home furnishings aisle was a browsing area or an area customers would pass through. One person had a toy in hand when he stopped to look into the furniture section. He ended up just walking away with just the toy and not with anything from that section, showing what he was truly there to get. This differed for places that were only furniture stores, like at the Restore, where people had intention with their purchases. These kinds of interactions were hard to observe online. So, the combination of both observation locations was necessary, even if the field observation was trickier for me. 

Interviews really helped my group get down to the root of the problems we were facing. One challenge I faced with my interviews was wanting to ask more questions but also being conscious of how much time I asked people to spend. Because there was no compensation for doing these interviews, it did not feel right to me to make my interviewees continue to answer questions if I felt as though I had gotten enough information from them. I do wish, in hindsight, I would've asked more follow-up questions and tried to touch on sustainability more through some of the questions. This was one thing our group discussed that was difficult to find in our secondary research and observation stage. What I liked about the interviews is that we got a lot more clarity on whether there is one true factor that influences home furnishing purchases, and we found that this was the price. In a scenario we gave to our participants, we asked them to pick their top favorite to least favorite couches. We then assigned high prices to their top favorite couches to see if that would influence purchasing decisions. It did with every interview, and no one was willing to pay more than their mental budget for a couch. This was my favorite part of the process and really allowed me to see underlying motivations.

Overall, the Discovery Phase of the Design Thinking Process helped my problem-solving skills. It allowed me to slow down and not jump to a conclusion right away. I had to really listen to the industries, people, and participants I was researching, and this kept my personal bias in check. I am excited to move on to the next phase.