Response – Chipchase, Hidden In Plain Sight: How To Create Extraordinary Products For Tomorrow’s Customers, Chapter 5

The reading provides an in-depth guide to how one may understand a foreign neighbourhood and its people, through its infrastructures and immersion. It is also through this understanding that we can invent or reinvent designs that work and suit the people. The guide covers general people viewing – to understand the local’s way of life and their routine, scrutinising small details in the community – noting nuances that might affect behavior, as well as to take note of things that are not there, all in the name of finding the gap in the market or to improve on a faulty cog in the machine.

Through the essay, I have found useful tips and directions in terms of understanding a target audience, and with these skills improved, I will be able to infer and conclude findings on groups that I might have no initial knowledge of as I can built it it through my own observation.

Take, for example, in Singapore, we have alot of campaigns and events that push for an improved art scene and culture. However upon the surface the celebrations and activities, as a avid consumer of the Arts and content creator myself, I have become a lethargic of the hundreds of blindly thrown darts at the board. Events after events, work after work from famous or up and coming artists from our Southeast Asian neighbours, forcing it into our eyes, when we have yet to develop a big enough scene of our own that our people want to see. While the efforts have been made on the part of our local creators, there is still much to be done in terms of well-developed and directed efforts to attract the attention of our local audience.

Question:

Another form of information collection would be surveys and interviews. Would formal interviews and surveys count towards this deeper understanding and how much would it have to be considered with bias, or if the interviewee will overthink? With that consideration, how do we avoid over-thinking when we ourselves make inferences out on the streets?