Coming into the class, I thought I had an idea of what a “customer insight” would be. Taking the term literally (as I often do; to give you a “Jennifer insight”), I assumed that it would be an insight or knowledge about your consumer that your competitors do not have. I have learned since, and have been pleasantly surprised, that it goes beyond that. Without even realizing it, I had equated customer insights with marketing research. I learned on the first day that the topic goes far beyond studying your current customers; it goes into diagnosing problems and discovering solutions. I think the key to a customer insight is that aha moment when you think: “why didn’t we have this years ago!” Like many, following that aha moment is usually that slap-in-the-forehead moment: “why didn’t I think of that!?” Well enough of the shoulda, coulda, woulda... I’m ready to learn about the all –important but seldom-understood customer insight.

The first topic that I felt was particularly interesting was the discussion of the difference between following your competitors, versus adding true design value. I was originally confused because I thought that a customer insight would lead to a product that would drastically differ from the current offering. In some ways, I assumedthat this would mean the invention of some brand new cutting edge technology. Through the lecture with our guest speaker Jeff Malhausen, I learned that this is not always true. In fact, in customer centered design it is always important to push the boundaries, but not to break so far beyond the consumer comfort zone that the product is not readily accepted. This concept, pioneered by Raymond Loewry, really helped me understand that although the new design driven by customer insights may involve some new technology, in all reality it is often a simple modification of the existing product.

I think a great example of this is the Flip camera. The status quo when this product emerged was an escalating “feature war” of companies battling to provide more or better specs. The video cameras were getting bigger, with more storage, and more this-and-that. This video-recording brinkmanship finally broke when someone took a step back and looked at the true needs of the consumer. The Flip camera is small, user friendly, simple, and I think most importantly it easily interfaces with social networking. The Flip camera was not successful because they developed cutting edge technology. The success came from understanding the needs of the customer. And on top of that, it came from providing to a market that was wide open.

In my opinion, this is where marketing research and customer relationship marketing falls short; they analyze the markets they currently hold to find how to gain market share over competitors. In this way, I think an important segment is consistently left out: in this case people who didn’t think they wanted or needed a video camera at all.

The other concept that initially surprised me was the fact that customer insights do not just include what product a consumer is looking for, but extends into what experiences the customer has when they purchase that product. I was initially surprised to see TOMS shoes on the slide of examples of products driven by customer insights. In this case the customer values the experience of knowing that their shoes convey their concern with the populations in the developing world. Although there is not new technology in the shoe, it provides a new experience along with shoe shopping.

One topic that has confused me, and I hope to learn more about, is the topic around “feature creep,” which relates to the theories of Dieter Rams who argued that “good design is as little design as possible.” This makes sense in a lot of ways, but I wonder about the exceptions. One example that I have found in real life is the singing toothbrush, or better known in the elementary school gossip channels: “Tooth Tunes”. In all honestlythough, I did buy this as a gag gift; however after some further scrutiny I think it is a pretty ingenious idea. How many times were you yelled at as a child when bedtime came around? After being herded into the bathroom to brush your teeth, despite your whining, excuses, and sometimes even lying (although they always catch you with the time-old breath sniff test), the length of your brushing was hardly a priority. Tooth Tunes solves this problem by cleverly timing the length of a proper tooth brushing to a popular song. Is it “feature creep” to add a musical feature to a toothbrush? Originally it may seem so, but I believe that it is an astute consumer insight into the problem of children being motivated to brush their teeth, especially for the dentist-recommended but mother-enforced amount of time.