Sunday, January 31, 2016

Customer Interviews No. 1


SO. Even as a journalist, I get nervous interviewing people. Some of these are friends of friends (I didn't know them until today so that counts, right?) and others are strangers I walked up to. I was honest, and I did cut down the videos and just made sure to record that they agreed to be recorded (I usually do that when I interview people). I asked them mostly about what pains them, and little irks about them. And I specifically asked them about parking, because that came up almost always immediately. And then I found the opportunity: a possible parking garage for more student parking! The kinds of people that have a problem with parking at UF are students and faculty.


   







I found the opportunity to ask them about UF parking because I myself have difficulty finding parking! It's a pain. And I learned that it is a shared feeling. To be honest, I've gotten good at asking the right questions, so I didn't come up with a list. For this, I started very general and pinpointed the issue. The hard part came was finding customers. In this case, these are people trying to buy parking on campus, essentially. People, students, who pay for tuition, and now have to pay for decals in order to park, well, anywhere! Unless you love far off-campus...
So yeah. This was my experience interviewing people. It was awkward and strange, but in the end, they were pretty irked by UF parking. 

4 comments:

  1. Hey, Melissa I think your idea is great, you have a great opportunity here. I also have trouble parking here at UF, so I can definitely relate to this problem. However, I am not able to view your videos on this blog :( perhaps you can check your post to see what's going on? I would love to watch your interview and give you my feedback. Love your idea!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Susana! Thanks so much for telling me. I didn't realize that the videos didn't upload. Give it a try now! Thanks.

      Delete
  2. Melissa,
    I think you have a great idea on your hands! Parking is so hard to find and its frustrating. Your interviews seemed genuinely random, and I think thats the key to getting good results. The point that one of the interviewed people made about faculty having way more parking that students was very accurate. I feel like the amount of students compared to faculty is very high to very low. Awesome job! Check out my blog: http://stefankostas.blogspot.com/2016/01/blog-post.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Melissa, I think everyone in Gainesville would agree that parking is a huge problem! One of my biggest peeves is when the city removes road-side parking and replaces them with bike lanes that are never used. I thought your interviews were good to go. They were informative on your point and your questions were interesting. The people you interviewed seemed engaged.

    ReplyDelete