Insight synthesis was a process that involved creating a problem statement that identified a need for our customer segment and a reason behind that need. It helped me to draw upon my experiences with observation and interviewing to find a key insight. Thursday’s class included only me and one other teammate, so we had only half of our team’s input in creating a workable problem statement for that day. We synthesized these statements independently, reviewed them with someone outside of our team, and regrouped to bring our completed statements together.
Outcomes
My teammate and I both formulated statements that identified our customer segment’s need for improvements in their community. I formed my statement around social life, and she formed her statement around “feelings of home.” Throughout the process of research, it became apparent quickly that young traveling professionals need a housing situation that facilitates their social lives as they are quite busy, and most of their time is taken up by work and travel. They seem to prefer outside social activities (meeting friends at a bar, restaurant, etc.), but that can be difficult because it is time consuming. My teammate touched on evidence of the idea that “home,” takes on a greater role in their lives as our interviewees used many emotional words in connection to their conception of home. Some of these included, “love,” “happiness,” and “comfort.” The problem statement identified a need for emotional fulfillment due to our segment’s taxing schedule and long list of engagements.
Lessons
Emotional Fulfillment
Understanding our segment through insight creation helped to clearly focus our inferences and information about some of our segment’s behaviors. Both of our statements began to demonstrate how housing can serve as a tool for greater emotional fulfillment for our customer segment. My teammates statement identified how certain feelings translate to a need of emotional fulfillment at home, and how homes serve as a mental sanctuary for our consumer segment. My statement about social life showed how a large source of fulfillment for our segment comes from meaningful social interactions, and that housing can play a role in facilitating those.
Healthy Lifestyle
Although it was cohesive to have some overlap in our statements, we felt that our insights were perhaps ignoring some of the other glaring problems that face our target market. This became immediately apparent in a moment of realization where we almost simultaneously asked the other, “what about health?” A Harvard Business Review article that surfaced during the secondary research phase discussed, in great detail, the statistics that illustrate the health problems that face traveling professionals. This was supported throughout the interview phase when several respondents shared that they strongly support a healthy lifestyle. In forming and amending future problem statements, we look to make sure that a healthy lifestyle gets strong consideration as a primary need for our market. Of course, this will be focused as a need that can be addressed by innovative housing solutions.
Rent
Without a doubt, our consumer segment faces high prices in their living arrangement situations. We definitely began this research process with that problem in mind, and it has come up in a few instances during research. With the current growth rate of cities, this does not seem to be a problem that is going to have an easy fix. So while one problem statement of ours did discuss this, we felt that this is not specifically a problem for just our target, but the increasing costs of city-life in general. Although we did not specifically discuss this during class on Thursday, it did come up as a concern throughout the insight synthesis process as a team. Therefore, it appears we are going to attempt to focus our problem statement on more unique aspects of greater fulfillment, rather than the glaringly obvious financial wellbeing of low-cost rent. But rent price will, of course, continue to be an important factor throughout the solution process.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed editing my problem statement with someone outside of the team. It helped to broaden my language and thinking to bring an outsider into the picture, and make sure they could understand the mechanics of the problem statement. After a productive group discussion and open sharing of ideas, I feel strongly that insight synthesis brought us a clearer focus to create an innovative housing solution.