I began by investigating an opportunity I had been thinking
about since Summer B, way before I took this entrepreneurship course. Students appreciate the fact that UF offers a
means for students to get around late at night (SNAP service). However, there
are major flaws in the mobile application and reliability of the vans according
to the answers given to my new questions (posted below). The best students to ask about SNAP are ones who live on and around campus and don't have a car since there are the most affected by the service. I decided that showing
the location of students would be a bad idea shortly after I posted my elevator
pitch. However, my idea to reveal the locations of all of the vans was well
received and this round of interviews reinforced the need for more vans. The ideal
version of SNAP is more transparent for students, reliable, and most
importantly: faster. Two out of the five interviews processed incorrectly had to be uploaded in audio format but the answers are still audible.
Questions:
What do you think about SNAP?
Did you have to wait an unusually long time in any instance?
Should the program deploy more vans at night?
What do you think about the idea of opening up the app and
being shown the location of all the active vans?
I learned that interviewing customers can definitely be
awkward but it is important to share your ideas with strangers and friends
alike.
Tip 1- Don’t be afraid to just ask someone for an interview;
almost anyone will say yes and the process flies by
Tip 2- Ask meaningful questions that target your
opportunity’s strengths
Tip 3- If you target the right customers (in my case, on
campus students), you are almost guaranteed to get relevant testimony every
time
I think your questions were really good, and the answered provided make a good case for implementing your idea. On the technical side, I'd suggest having someone else film, and you yourself being a part of the video. At least from my experience, filming a conversation rather than just pointing the camera at someone can make them comfortable and maybe even get them to open up more. But I don't think your filming detracted from the information gained too much if at all. Good job!
ReplyDeleteYou had some great questions that were really thought out. I did notice that you were kind of steering your interviewee in a certain direction. Maybe generalize your questions to get a more honest answer. When you ask if they ever had to wait a long time or if they should deploy more vans, you are putting those ideas into their head. Instead, maybe ask "How has your experience been with the time of arrival?" or "What do you think could be done to solve that issue?", with this you might actually find even more areas to focus on. Great job!
ReplyDeleteHi Ryan. I really like your idea of making snap more effective. I used to use snap during my freshmen summer b and I remember it being incredibly frustrating and difficult to get from place to place. I think that you asked really effective questions and got good responses from each of your candidates. I agree with John that maybe you should try to be in the video next time. Here's a link to my blog post: http://laurasici.blogspot.com/2016/02/interviewing-customers-no-2.html
ReplyDeleteHi Ryan,
ReplyDeleteYou idea seems good. I live off campus and I have never used SNAP, so wouldn't be able to identify myself with the problems of the service, but it obviously seems to be an area of opportunity by the feedback you obtained. You probably want to go ahead and get a little bit more concrete about what you would offer as a solution. For example: an independent app that would provide the vans' locations, an alternative service, etc.
You can read my blog and watch my interviews here: http://juansesoto.blogspot.com/2016/02/1.html
Ryan, I really like your idea of improving the SNAP system and I believe that we would reap many rewards from having a better system. Aside from making the campus safer for students, a better service with more cars would decrease waiting times. I think you should also ask people how they feel about the university distributing more funds to the system and potentially taking away from other opportunities on campus.
ReplyDelete