What is an insight?

Many of us are unaware that disabled people make up 10% of the population.

That’s hundreds of millions of people around the world for whom most things aren’t well designed.

Take furniture for example.

If you’re disabled, it’s more than likely you need it built for your specific needs.

The problem is that custom built stuff is expensive.

As a leading manufacturer of products for the home, IKEA became aware of this.

In collaboration with two NGOs, they started a project to find a way to make their furniture more usable for disabled customers.

A team of product product engineers accompanied a group of disabled customers to an IKEA store.

They observed how they interacted with the furniture and designed a series of 3D printable plastic additions that could be affixed to their existing range to make them usable by those with disabilities.

This led to the ‘ThisAbles’ campaign created by McCann Tel Aviv.

Perhaps the best way to think of an insight is “An observation you can take action on.”

Therefore having good insights is really about being observant. Learning about people by observing them, and speaking to them, seeing how they use things etc.

It’s about connecting the marketer’s worldview with the customer’s worldview.

The problem is we are often looking but not seeing.