We were tasked with observing behaviors in scenarios or areas that would be applicable to our project scope and the group we are trying to focus on. We divided up various places to observe and did so. The business school is good about having projects and activities done for classes outside of the classroom, but most of my experience with those has been interviews with very limited observation. The observations I have done before more related to a process of some sort and trying to find the inefficiencies. The observations for this class were much different since we were trying to identify human behavior.
To aid us in figuring out how people may use a public gym, whether it is for purely working out, socializing, or anything else that could motivate them to be there. I went to the Campus Rec center and found a spot where I could observe the people entering and leaving the gym as well with those working out (trying to be as discrete as possible). Immediately I noticed there were groups of people socializing and others working out. It was hard to say if the people socializing were done working out or just prepping too. Later I found out that the largest group was a few personal trainers waiting on what I presume was their scheduled appointments. I also observed later that those working out in two’s were just as efficient with working out as the individual ones. The only difference is there was some talk in between the changing of machines and motivation while the other completed a set. From my observation, I believe having someone to go with adds to the experience and quality of the workout, making it more desirable. I also learned that trying not to focus on one group or individual for too long worked much better because I was able to notice more happen in the grander scheme of things. I later relocated and observed much of the same.
I then had a few friends that were planning to walk to Colonial Williamsburg. Since my overall goal was to observe how people interact in shared public spaces, I thought this was a great opportunity to see another side of that. We walked through Merchant’s Square and mostly stayed around the Governor’s Palace green. I made a few observations during my time there. The clearest observation I made was everyone that fit our researched age group was either in a group of other similar aged people or individually walking their dog. Literally every appearance this was the case. Older generations on the other hand were either couples one on one walking around or individually walking (sometimes with a dog as well). From what I could gather from this observation is that when going to be in a public park space, the younger age groups will do so in a group because it is more desirable while individual appearances were more a responsibility to get ones dog some air (but also enjoyable of course). One difficulty however was figuring out if the groups of people were residents or not. Personally, they behaved like they were, but I couldn’t know for sure. What I learned from this observation is that there should be a focus on community for our project. This is important because based off what I saw, younger people are more inclined to use a public space if they have definite colleagues to share it with. Without that sense of community, it is hard to say if there would have been as much activity during that time.