After conducting 25 minute interviews, I was able to gather a good amount of information based on their needs in comparison of my service. I interviewed, Amanda, Lucas, and Tyler. All 3 people have applied for student loans and are using that money to pay to go to college. The need is the most prevalent in college students and people who have recently graduated from college and that was mirrored by their responses. The main context which they all shared is they had to pay out of state tuition and were not covered by certain scholarships such as Florida Bright Futures like in state kids are. The need becomes the most salient for the people that aren’t able to get extremely high paying jobs straight out of college, which is basically all of us. Amanda’s situation was a little bit better as she was planning to apply to the MSF program, which would almost guarantee her a really high paying job out of college, but this is an extremely selective program so it would be hard to really know. When Amanda first became aware of her need, it was right before college and she was able to do a lot of research online to determine which loan service would be right before and how much she would have to pay later on based on interest and other expenses. Lucas was about the same, except he just picked any student loan service based on eligibility and hoped for the best and does not really have a clue about how he is going to pay them back. Tyler on the other hand, has not gotten a loan yet but plans too. He says he paid this semester’s tuition out of pocket and plans to apply next semester so that he can be covered. He is very stressed and is worry about getting ripped off which is why I think my service is a really good idea. They all talked to family for it and Amanda was the only one who did serious deep research on what would fully work for her. I think the largest issue is most don’t do the research required and my service would help to fix that issue because we would do the research for you and make it as simple as possible.
Hi Jaiden,
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you interviewed multiple people because it gives you a good spectrum on their different opinions. I do agree with you that so many college students are trying to pay for college through taking out a student loan. Most of these students actually walk out of college with so much debt that they can barely even afford to pay back after college. I think your idea would be very good to solve this issue.
Amanda Gonzalez
Hi Jaiden,
ReplyDeleteI think the need awareness and information search in this instance show how well your service could work. When it comes to the information search especially, a good online service that compares different offers in a transparent way would help a lot. As seen in your interviews, some people do not even do the necessary search and might get trapped with the wrong plan, so it would be good to have your service as the first point of contact. As you mentioned that the need awareness appears right before college, perhaps you could insert a flyer into the "letter of acceptance" of the according university, if that exists and would be possible?
Ollie
Hi Jaiden,
ReplyDeleteI like how all 3 of your interviews were at different places in their financial need process. Your product needs to be one of the first things people see when needing money to apply for college. One thing to keep in mind is how is this different than something like the FAFSA and doing one large application for a plethora of different scholarships.
Sarah