Once again, I found the “quizzing for context” aspect of the Entrepreneruial Mindset by Ian MacMillan and Rita Gunther-McGrath to be an incredibly useful exercise for reducing the amount of uncertainty in a venture. The venture I have undertaken isn’t necessarily a business venture, but more of a venture into the world of Student (Technology) Experience. I tried to use some of the questions posited in Entrepreneurial Mindset to try to understand the experience of a student at a university (particularly a business university).
Here are some of the questions I was asking myself:
- Who will be using the technology? What different kinds of students?
- What are they using the technology for?
- How are they using the technology? Which devices are they using and how?
- Why are they using the technology? Why are they using a particular device or brand?
- How are they feeling while they are using the technology? How are they feeling when the technology isn’t working?
- Who are they with when they are using the technology or who is on the receiving end of the technology?
- Where are they using the technology? How is the environment important to the technology?
- When are they using the technology?
While I was answering these questions an interesting pattern emerged. I realized that the uses of technology could essentially be broken down into four categories:
- Interaction – anything from phone calls, to text messages, to emails, to video conferencing, social networking, and collaboration software.
- Consumption – consuming content/multimedia for knowledge acquisition or for entertainment purposes.
- Production – producing content/multimedia for knowledge dissemination or for entertainment purposes.
- Management - managing time, managing content, managing social connections, etc.
I started to think about the different levels of important each technology held depending on which category it fell under. For example, mobile devices are fantastic for interaction, consumption, and management but they might currently fall short under production since most people would probably still seek out a laptop or desktop machine to produce videos, Photoshop designs, or large research papers. Certain subcategories also hold more importance than others. For an example of the subcategories of interaction, downtime on Face Book might not pose a significant problem, whereas having delayed email might be incredibly significant if you are trying to set up an interview with a desired employee. Not being able to post a personal blog, wouldn’t be as frustrating or important as not being able to print a final paper that is due in an hour.
Some other ideas that emerged while I was thinking about context: the idea of different brands of technology (People will be using different brands for reasons ranging from loyalty to specific capabilities of that brand), and the notion of people having high expectations of using any technology in almost any environment. For example, people want to have adequate wireless connections wherever possible and an adequate number of outlets to plug their devices into when they need to be recharged.
I’ll be making an important effort to be cognizant of context while I familiarize myself with the student experience of technology.
