When choosing my domain of interest I took a lot into consideration based on my personal experiences in life thus far. I narrowed it down to the following three options. Education, global translation, and medicine focused on medical supplies. These three predicaments have been prevalent in my life.
Education System
My first domain of interest is the traditional education system. It has flaws and I experienced the flaws first-hand throughout my first year in college. I have found that a more remote untraditional education system has been more effective for me. From my personal experiences, I can only assume that other people have the same opinion.
Global Translation
My second domain of interest, global translation, has been something I’ve been interested in since I was young. I went to Chinatown in Chicago, Illinois when I was 8 years old. I remember seeing the words that were foreign to me and being very confused as to why there was a whole area of town that was primarily Chinese. As I grew up, I then learned about different cultures and how language influences them. I then wanted to simplify a way to translate languages very fast and effectively. I was aware of google translate, but, I knew there had to be an easier way to translate more efficiently. I have some ideas that I have been pondering for a long time based on that topic.
Medicine
As for my third domain of interest, medicine, I had a Grandfather pass away my senior year of high school. I witnessed how expensive medical supplies were and I made it one of my personal missions to make affordable medical supplies for impoverished families.
Domain Choice
From my three options to focus on, I decided to pull my focus on remote education. I know the traditional education system has been under scrutiny for a while for its ineffectiveness so I really believe that this is a very relevant topic in today’s time as we move forward to making untraditional colleges more socially acceptable. My opinion on the matter is that remote education is the future of education, and I want to make remote education more available to people entering college, and after college, if wanted. My competition is pretty much a given. It is the entire college education system. This is a very tough proposition.
Now that I have decided on my domain, I’ve decided to use a tool for analysis called a PEST analysis. A PEST analysis is a tool for organizing thoughts for your product idea based on PEST. P being the political, E economic, S social, and T technological factors.
PEST analysis
(P)olitical: politically, traditional colleges are under the constant stress of student loans and how they are affecting the young generation greatly. Also, recent studies from Psychology Today has found that college students have around a 20% chance of developing PTSD from the constant stresses from the college setting.
(E)conomic: The economic factors towards remote education are massive based on its competition. According to Student Loan Hero, College graduates in 2018 had an average of 30,000$ in loans. Bringing the total student loan debt in the United States to 1.56 trillion.
(S)ocial: My analysis for the social aspect is based on my own experience thus far. I currently am enrolled at an untraditional college. I have 150+ peers meaning there are people willing to take the untraditional route of education. I’m sure if it were made more readily available more people would take advantage of its benefits.
(T)echnology: It is currently the absolute best time for technology. Technology has advanced far enough so that having remote classes is something that would not be an impossible mission. Starting in the more technologically advanced areas of the world, then, spreading to less advanced areas.
Competitive Analysis
For my competitive analysis, I am going to list my competition and how my product has benefits over my competition and list some possible problems that could be faced
Competition
My main competition for my product is the American college system. I hope to offer an alternative learning program, via remote education, that is offered to those past graduating high school. I don’t mean having your GED but rather be at a certain age. Which means there will probably be an age requirement. The main problem that could be faced is the credibility of my product. That will be earned in time but to make it to a point where it’s credible will be the challenge.
Benefits
The benefit of my product will be that the classes will be held remotely and the plan is to be able to look at the curriculum before the class is being held and information on the person that is teaching the class. Another benefit is that you don’t have to come to a building to attend class and you aren’t bound to attend. If you don’t attend you don’t learn. The choice is yours.
Personal Experience
I personally am enrolled in an untraditional college and I plan on taking mental notes on what I see is working and is not working for the college and implement those working factors into my plans for remote education. As well as take into account what is not working in the program. I do see a potential credibility problem, based on the fact that this is a new idea that has little research to make it seem worth it. Many technologies are available to make remote education a possibility for many. According to the Pew Research Center, 81% of Americans own a smartphone. This is the vast majority of the United States population that has the opportunity to access a remote education app or website.
Purpose of User Interviews
User interviews are incredibly valuable because it really takes into account whether or not you have an actual market or demand for the product you intend on shipping to the public. You take personal answers from real people to see if they would be actually interested and not just coming up with hypothetical reasons as to why someone would need your product. You also learn who your specific market is. This is valuable information because if you know who your target audience is, you can create your product molded by the wants and needs of the audience.
unbiased open-ended questions
1: Tell me about your school experience during college, if not, high school
2: What is the purpose of school?
These were the main questions I began with while doing my user interviews. I believe these were not too invasive of questions to ask people. Most of my replies were positive, in the sense that I got answers. I interviewed random people in Union Square. When asking people how their experience of upper has or was the answers are were really mixed. Some people said they loved their experience of college and others said they very much disliked their experience. When told by people that their experiences were not good, I decided to really push questions at that point. Asking why they disliked college. Asking what could have been made better for their experience to be what they wanted it to be. I was pretty shocked when the answers, mostly, were that they were learning pointless things that they had no interest in. This opinion is something I will keep into consideration once I begin to plot out my idea on a remote education website.
PRODUCT IDEA
I help college students and graduates achieve furthering their knowledge through remote education and certification classes. This has an advantage over traditional colleges because you can focus on what you want to learn and not have to take and spend money on classes you have no interest in taking. My own personal experience is that I had to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars that I didn’t have on classes that I had no interest in. This really takes the drive out of students. Meaning it takes away the incentive to learn in that specific class because if you have no interest you are less likely to try as hard in the class. I hope to take away that struggle for students so that they don’t have to spend money on useless things.
USER JOURNEY
the vision I have for this application is that you are presented with a homepage that has sponsors and certain information for certain jobs. You have tabs that are aimed towards certain job fields. Let’s say one of the tabs is software development. when you click the tab it takes you to a new page and shows you a list of possible certifications and information on the certifications and what they are relevant for. Another function on this tab would be available classes. Showing you the available classes coming up soon and how much the classes would be and maybe an overview of what the class would consist of. Almost like a syllabus. This isn’t only for software development. I hope to have sections for almost anything. From any kind of engineering to plumbing.
Wireframe
a wireframe is a basic skeleton or blueprint of your product. I created one to see how strong I thought my idea was and if I could fit it into a website. Another benefit of doing a wireframe is to have a visualization of how you are going to set up your product. It gives you something to work towards instead of doing something off of the vision you have in your head.
This is my very basic wireframe for my idea. I hope to eventually add more to this and make plans for the next pages.
Now that I have decided what my domain of interest is, done a PEST analysis, conducted user interviews, and made a wireframe I need to hone in and begin the construction of my remote education application.