With the upcoming presentation consistently on our minds and evident dissatisfaction with the state of our physical prototype, the team decided that a change was necessary.

While this inevitably brought about conflict amidst our team, it was unanimously decided that there were some issues in need of addressing and a new iteration was somewhat timely.

Of the most pressing issues, there were two rather significant problems that were most imminent: a target audience in need of updating and the issue of an increasingly similar project amidst our IAT 404/5 class.

Firstly, our original target audience (specifically, busy young professionals) was obviously derived from our team’s identification of a problem: people leading busy lives rarely have time for gardening or the environment, regardless of their interest. However, this specific target audience became more of a hindrance than anything else; in short, it prevented us from looking into other situations where this product might be utilized and alternate user groups that could potentially be interested. But more than anything else, there was still the question of whether busy professionals would have an interest in this product for long-term periods. In addressing these questions, we’ve decided to drop the use of a target audience and develop a target persona instead. In contrast to target audiences, the target persona allows for less narrow-mindedness and a more open approach to the potential market dynamics. The details of this persona will be released next week with our presentation slides.

Secondly, and perhaps most infuriatingly, our team was rather troubled by the overt similarities between our project and a fellow team. Rather than dwelling on this, however, we decided to further differentiate our product by developing a new visual style and by emphasizing the above shift in target users. This will also be further addressed in our upcoming presentation.