Primary Research - Observing People

We went down to Lambton Quay and people watched/observed our target audience.

We found a lovely planter thingie on Lambton that was a nice example of how something more natural can break up they monotony of the street.

Insight: People don't like unpredictability. We watched how people reacted to a balloon that had been dropped by a child on the footpath and observed how it created more stress because it was out of the ordinary. When you're focused on your end goal, anything that interrupts that is startling. We had expected people to interact with the balloon and have fun with it but instead people avoided it.
Insight: We found that when people had points of connection they were more likely to interact with strangers. We did an experiment where we walked down the street and smiled at people when we made eye contact with them. People were confused and defensive about why we were trying to interact with them. We wonder if we would have received a different reaction if we didn't look like students/if we fitted in better. We found that the only time we connected with strangers and got them to share a smile with us was when pigeons nearly flew into them (or something else unusual occurred) and they realised we had seen what had happened. This gave a form of connection between us/something that we had in common, like we were sharing an inside joke, and therefore made it acceptable to interact.
Insight: What works in one part of the city might not work in another - even 500m away. We felt a lot more out of place on Lambton Quay because of our age, clothing, lack of destination etc than we did on Cuba St.