Todays' lesson

What do young people in America want? Given a week and not much direction my team was given the task of trying to figure out how to capture the attention and needs of a younger generation to capture a new market for NPR. Quite frankly there a MILLIONS of businesses that are doing this work and they charge MILLIONs to tell major multinational companies how to do it. My team of four was given 5 days and no money. So I'm pretty sure that I don't know the answer yet. But for a strange reason one of my classmates knew somebody who had teenage boys so completely lacking direction, we decided to interview them. At my school my experience these days have been to go interview people from amazingly varied backgrounds and to try to understand their lives. Saturday morning, I found myself waking up at 7am to go catch a train to Hinsdale, Il and then onto Midlothian Illinois. What followed was one of the most depressing/ eye opening interviews so far.

Upon arriving to the house, I first think the house is pretty normal until I realize the entire backside is utterly under construction and covered in plastic sheeting. The family is very kind and polite and more than willing to answer our questions, but we realize immediately that these people are probably not NPR's target market. The entertainment system is sleek, a Wii, an xbox 360, overstuffed couches and flat panel screen tvs and the kids yell and scream as they play with their Wiis and a massive dog runs around in circles to the front and back. As we interview the family and the kids we start to find that this family is really NASCAR's target market as their house is covered in auto gear, manuals and information. As we interview the boys, we find out none of them read books, they are barely passing/care about high school. Coming from an insulated background I realize that people don't look things up, try new things or really care to know. People actually aren't very curious. They don't really care about where they get their information, about authenticity nor the truth. They don't care to chase things down and most of the times they wait for tv or other mediums to simply feed them their information. If skateboarding gets hard, they quit. After spending weeks, months, years obsessing over information, books and learning, working and trying so hard to overcome daily challenges; interviewing these boys makes me feel really depressed.

This is how it usually is.
These are the people who we're really designing for....
not my sisters nor my friends.
My god I can't believe how blind I am.

For once we questioned our value system and how we judge. The mother and father get along well, make sure to discipline their children and put them through school. They teach them about fixing cars and are actually teaching them a really necessary skill. They don't live opulently, but they have entertainment, a close family relationship and friends in their neighborhood. Quite frankly they're not wealthy, but they seem happy and probably fill the definition of success. This is the reality of most of the world and this is who most products are catered to. And with that realization, we freaked out and spent three days reading every childhood, adolescent development article and pulled all sorts of data regarding media, information, internet and social values. I'm tired, my head is twirling and I can't think anymore... which is why I'm writing here instead.

I still have no clue what young people want. But its a definite first lesson.