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College

There is nothing like sitting in on a Focus Group to give you a bit more perspective on your industry. Last night I had an opportunity to sit in on one, and among other things it proved once again how completely detached from reality all of us tech types are.

One of the main thrusts of the questions was, “How does a typical college student interact with technology.” There were far too many great points to do justice to in a short article, but here are just a few lessons I took away from the group.

Product designers, take note.


College Students Don’t Know What You Do

No I am not talking about early adopters. Many of them are already searching you out, it’s time to start looking outside of the techosphere.

If you want to find your way into the hearts and minds of a student, find your way into their cell phone.

Don’t, however, think that pushing them notifications and Alerts is a good idea. These days, text message spam rates right up there with email spam on the list of best ways to get your service blacklisted.

Facebook, MySpace, Gmail. If you don’t happen to be the product manager for one of these three services, normal people have no idea what you are doing.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The old adage that everything in Web 2.0 has already been done might be true, but very few things have been marketed.

If your product relies on heavy data entry, people won’t use it. All you Personal Organizer developers, it might be time to take a better look at your UI.

As it turns out, privacy is not completely dead. Lots of people are freaked out by the idea of posting their personal details online.

Paradoxically, the “details” that are posted in a Facebook profile don’t seem to count.

Finally, this quote pretty much sums of everything you need to know about marketing a product, “I signed up for Facebook because I heard it was a requirement for college.”


Web 2.0 Roundup

While no single Focus Group will give you the secret to marketing, they are a good way to gain some intuition before throwing yourself into your next web project. More than that, however, they give you a chance to take a look at technology from an outsiders perspective. If you ever plan on working your way into the mainstream, this is exactly the perspective you will need.

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