Although the design will need to meet the needs of bees I thought it was also important to conduct some research into my human clients, who I hope will purchase and use my product. I have created a general questionnaire about what kind of outside spaces people have and their perceptions of bees, bee keeping and bee charity work. Most importantly I wanted to establish if people are interested in the plight of bee and would they buy a bee box product. Is their a need for my product?
I created a questionnaire on 'Surveymonkey.com and posted the link on Facebook as I felt this was a good way of reaching a large amount of people very quickly and didn't require a lot of effort for people to complete. I put out an initial post on my status however this can often be overlooked so took a more direct approach and posted the link directly on every member of my Facebook's wall. Using my Facebook friends gave me a good variety of responses such as;
Mixed ages (13-62 years old)
Mixed genders
Mixed ethnicities
Different areas of the country
different countries (Australia, Germany, Bulgaria, Malaysia)
Mixed social and economic backgrounds
I felt that as I had also posted the questionnaire on peoples personal walls this would also make it available to the people on their friends list and therefore could be made available to thousands of people, most like a chain letter.
Results summery:
The amount of responses I received were not as many as I would have liked considering the amount of people who could have filled out the questionnaire, however I still feel that it was an adequate amount to get a good insight and shape my product accordingly.
If if I had to write a simple client profile based on the findings from this questionnaire it would be;
Females aged 21-29 years old, who have only access to small outside spaces at home. They are somewhat concerned about British wildlife however not actively doing anything about it. They are aware of the plight bees and would like to do something to help this situation. They know what a nesting box is and have no reservations about encouraging bees into their gardens providing it is safe to do so. Her priorities with a bee box product is how much it costs to buy, Effort to build and install it, how it looks, how safe it is to use and how well it works. She is happy with self assembly products and enjoys putting them together providing it isn't over complicated and time consuming.
On reflection a question i should have included in the questionnaire is weather they live in the city or the country side, however I did ask whether they have an outside space and what size this was, which was still helpful.
Questions and results
Question 1 & 2- The age group which showed most interest in the questionnaire was the 21-29 year old category which I found surprising as I initially thought it would be much older people who would be interested in charity work and environmental issues. Although in terms of gender, Females were the major majority of people who took time to fill out the questionnaire, which is what I suspected as I feel women tend to be more caring. Although the results indicate this I would still prefer to keep the product gender neutral as I wish to reach a large demographic of people and not limit myself, however it is still worth while keeping this in mind. The results may be also bias as i have a lot more females on my Facebook than males which could also affected the results.
Questions 3 & 4 As I had hoped the majority of people who took the questionnaire had outside spaces and particularly limited/small outside space which was pleasing as I was getting responses from the people I am trying to target with this product. There was a high percentage of people showing some form of concern about British wildlife which reassures me I am making something for a worthwhile cause.
Questions 5 & 6 I was surprised to find that most people who filled out the questionnaire were aware of the plight bees are facing and know what a nesting box is which was encouraging.It is because of these findings that I am hopefully people would be interested in buying a bee nesting box product.
Questions 7 & 8 Results show that the majority of people were happy to encourage bees into there garden providing it was safe. Safety is something I considered quite early on when considering the species of bees I was designing for. Solitary bees are a good option as they are non aggressive and do not swarm (Which would be good if the box is disturbed or falls down). a few people I spoke to about nesting boxes initially said no to having a bee box however changed there mind when I explained they are different from honey bees and that solitary bees safe are safe to have in close proximity to the house.
Questions 9 & 10 I thought it was important to know what people want from a product when they purchase them and what I should prioritise when creating my product. The most important factor coming from question 9 is that the cost to buy is the most important element over anything else (even how well it works!) aside from this it was a rather mixed bag however elements that didn't really concern consumers is cost to manufacture, how easy it is to distribute and what materials it is made from, which I think it is because these are elements the manufacturer would be concerned with and not generally the consumer.
Finally I was quite surprised that most people enjoy self assembly products which is helpful in the fact I can fully justify creating a flat pack product, however it is still important that it is easy to assemble as this was the second most popular choice.