What good is an idea if it has not been validated? Validation is the key to success when analyzing if an idea is a good one or not since our own view point may be biased. This most recent week we spent time doing just that. We started by getting together to discuss our approach such as figuring out when to have our focus group and if we would be conducting follow up interviews. We scheduled the date and ultimately decided to conduct at least two follow up interviews.
I volunteered to manage one of those interviews and reached out to the two individuals I had interviewed before. I arranged a date with the one who was available and received some valuable insight into the advancement of our idea based off our previous research and the interviewees first interview. The most valuable of these discoveries I made was that the interviewee had shown interest in the idea after the follow up interview and said he considered living even more modestly starting off if our idea was present and available at his disposal. This leads me to believe that many individuals seeking affordable urban living may be influenced to downsize even more if this public space were available to them to host, entertain, and enjoy community. If this is the case, then it is safe to say that the more well-known “the Den” becomes, the more legitimate possible customers would be present. Obviously this would require much more feedback, but as of now, it is an educated guess.
We hosted the Focus Group in a booked room in Swem and had a very good turnout. I believe we averaged about three people per group member. Sarah was the moderator and did a fantastic job staying on track but keeping it open to ideas and creativity. Claire and I went over the two prototypes and helped answer questions. Our feedback included many positive comments along with helpful constructive criticism. Of this criticism, the most common was in regards to payment plans. Originally we thought to make it completely membership based. However, due to the comments, we have brainstormed some ideas to fix this issue. Something else that came up was if the space should be either public or private instead of straddling both areas. This was very concerning because our research is what led us to the idea to try and incorporate both. But we believe the concern was stemmed more towards a management issue than a general concept issue. Overall we were able to consider updates to the areas of our concept that received positive feedback and I look forward to the final plan we settle on!