Diving right back into the project after fall break, my group and I knew we had to use the next phase of the process to find the focus that we lacked in the Discover portion of our work. From the very start of making our personas, we understood how critical it was that we hone in on housing and how our demographic interacts with the market. Even so, we struggled to follow through with this goal in the persona creation process. There were so many possibilities available to us that we almost didn’t know where to begin (most likely a result of our failure to focus the first half of our project). It was a struggle to identify the kind of person who we wanted to be the ideal customer within our scope. We persisted, however, and finally gained a foothold toward our focus within the persona. She embodies several elements of the customer that we did not initially consider when writing our scope. In writing her story, we discovered the way she would interact with the housing market, her dreams, her fears, her resources. I don’t know that I would call it an aha moment, but it definitely cast a brighter light for us to follow toward our end goal.
The journey map came together much more easily than the personas. Once again, we narrowed our attention during the process of creating it. We scrapped the first few iterations of steps on the journey, since we thought we were thinking too broadly. As we brainstormed out loud, we realized the part of the journey we were interested in pursuing. We thought back on our interviews and observations and the frustrations and other insights uncovered there and we used that information to identify the steps surrounding with the greatest opportunity for innovation. Though our map is not yet in its final form, I feel confident in the focus it has brought to our work and will continue to bring as we move forward to the ideation stage.