Immersion: Why We Love What We Do.

One of the greatest things in running a company like Insight2 is the diverse experiences that come with it.  We talk a lot about "contextual immersion" which is just a fancy way of saying that we get into the world of our consumers so that we can both experience it as well as observe people that naturally live there.  For a given project we will recruit target individuals that we can interview and "shadow" so that we can uncover opportunities to better satisfy their needs.  But in addition to the recruiting, we typically immerse ourselves in our client's target environment so that we come to understand issues first hand.  That's the greatest part of the job really.  In the past we have played paintball, motored around on boats, golfed, gardened, landscaped, played with dolphins, thrown huge grilling parties, cleaned homes, cut grass and even taken showers with a huge array of shower heads.  We feel it's important to ground ourselves in the reality that is the category we're researching.  It helps us not only to ask better questions during the research, but it helps us to notice things that might otherwise never be observed.

It looks like we're ramping up for another busy summer, and the immersion is beginning again.  This summer I will again be putting in a vegetable garden to better empathize with one project, bowling several times a week for another project and using high-end cookware for a third.  I've got a phone meeting with a company that runs day camps on the West Coast.  If that materializes, I may suggest that my kids attend a week of camp there while I work at observing and interviewing other participants and
  parents.  We're firm believers that to develop opportunities for a product we should know the product first-hand. 

So with this in mind, here is our future project wish list (in no particular order):

• Innovating the high-end cruise line experience
• Hot air balloons - experience innovation
• Convertible sport cars
• Mountain or sea-side resorts
• Video game systems
• Etc.

But we're not proud.  If projects regarding recycling, garbage collection, personal hygiene or roofing come up, we'll take those too.  The reality is, immersion is fun, no matter what form it takes.