M A R K E T I N G R E S E A R C H
& D E S I G N M E T H O D S
After more than a year of studying Industrial Design, I have discovered that I am most interested in the creative- and business sides of the study. I specifically find Marketing interesting. I want to learn what would be a reason for a customer to buy a certain product and become a loyal customer. I want to learn how to built a strong brand and company. These learning objectives were partly achieved in the first part of the course ‘Marketing research and design methods.’ I do not believe I can learn how to do these things within four weeks, but I think I am heading in the right direction and have already learned quite a lot when it comes to these things.
This part of the course was something close to my expertise and close to things I have learned within my study. This may be the reason why I took on the role of leader within the project and why I feel like I may have done more than others. However, I did not mind this, because I enjoyed every part of it. I enjoyed making the videos, presentations, paper prototypes, I liked presenting, interviewing users, determining the marketability of a product, etc.
As I predicted, this project was up my street and I discovered that I find marketing in combination with design even more interesting than I initially thought. I also discovered that I have more knowledge about marketing and user testing than I originally thought. I had a discussion with Martin in which he thought the target group should be established after designing the product, while I thought it was much more effective to involve the user within every step of the design process. This course, once again, confirmed that the user is much more important than most people think.
The second part of the course did not fit my identity as much as the first, but was still critical to good marketing research. I learned the basics about programming in R. I used this program to analyze data and do research.
