My Customer Interviews No. 1

1) Find an opportunity. For my opportunity, I began to think about the things we as students use/need on a daily basis. I came to the conclusion that we all, for the most part, use the bus system. This sometimes creates an overcrowding on the buses, resulting in full buses that cannot accommodate all the students that were trying to get on. This has been an issue for me in the past, whether I am trying to get to class, an exam, or just the library. To help this problem, I believe it would be beneficial if the TransLoc bus app not only showed WHEN a bus is coming, but also if it is already FULL. This would make it much easier for students to budget their time accordingly and make sure they get where they're going on time.

2) Figure out who might have the unmet need. Any students who take the buses to get to class, especially those who live off campus, have the unmet need.

3) Come up with a list of questions. I asked my "customers" unbiased questions about their experience with the RTS bus system, prompting them into further detail on their responses.

4) Go talk to customers! I interviewed 5 people from around my apartment complex. As it is primarily students who live here and most take the bus to get onto campus, I figured this was a good place to find my target audience.


5) Tell us what you learned about the opportunity. Based on my interviews, I believe that this is a valid opportunity where there is an unmet need. When asked about their experiences with the bus, most students I talked with told me that they are fairly happy with the bus system overall, but that they often have troubles with the buses being full. Because of this, they have had to adjust their schedules and a lot extra time for in case they end up getting stuck on the following bus.

6) Tell us what you learned about interviewing customers. I did not mind doing these interviews, as I am naturally a friendly, outgoing person who talks to strangers anyways. Some of my closest friends now are random people I just started talking to at some point in the past! So this assignment was not too far outside of my comfort zone.

Here are my interviews:

xoxo The EntrepreTraveler