More reality, some aha

Martin Weigel wrote a post at end of July that ended up winning Neil Perkins Post of the Month. It caught our eye when it was published for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Stop Fetishising the Insight is a superb look at why there is not a need to push so dramatically the need for aha moments, to make findings ‘profound and clever’ rather than useful. We agree. At an Innovation conference a few years ago I listened to the Innovation department from Whirlpool stand up on stage and say that they went to houses of people with washing machines an watched them load their machines. They noticed they all bent down when filling their machines – I know – and hence developed a front loading machine which you can fill standing up. Reality, not aha. But still needed to be observed.

Dramatising the insight is something we at watchmethink deliberately want to avoid. We’re focusing heavily on observation, on showing the consumer in their real environment, using products and services how they use them. No forced questions, no direction, no dramatization, no telling them what we want to hear. We’re giving the users the freedom to upload videos on what they want, in a style they want – as long as we can see and hear what they are talking about it’s all fine. Reality.

One of the initial fears we had were when creating watchmethink was is there value in these non aha moment videos. But it’s not, as Martin says, all about that. There are some great ‘aha’ moments, some absolute classics, but most are just showing people using products and services in or out of their home. How they do it. They’re all interesting. They all provide observation. Most of all, they’re all reality.

Judging it by Martins two point check list to measure value – is it true, and is it useful – the answer to both those questions for videos from watchmethink is yes.

Martin says, ‘ let’s reclaim insight as a way of looking and thinking, and take it off its pedestal of unhealthy attention and worship’. Here here (and congrats on post of the month).