The first pronge of our user research involved investigating the shopping habits of seniors and what types of music players they are interested in.

Understanding what stores currently sell

We visited several stores in order to understand what music player features are important to seniors. These stores were all consumer stores that marketed to the general public, as there are no specialty stores in the local area that cater specifically to seniors. In all we visited four stores:

• Target @ Homestead, PA
• Best Buy @ Homestead, PA
• Circuit City @ Monroeville, PA
• Radio Shack @ Squirrel Hill, PA

When approaching the customer sales representatives, our goal was to determine typical seniors' buying habits. Among some of the questions we were hoping to ask:

• What types of music players are most popular with seniors?
• What music player features are seniors interested in?
• What types of questions/issues do seniors ask when they are considering on buying a music player?
• How many seniors usually inquire about a music player on a typical day/week?
• How does the typical consumer compare with the senior consumer when it comes to music players?

We also planned to have the customer sales representatives show us and demonstrate specific players that seniors usually show interest in buying.

Current Products

We also looked at current products that are on the market that seemed to be geared toward senior tastes.

Findings

We found that customer sales representatives vary greatly in their helpfulness. Unfortunately, the customer sales representatives at Circuit City and Target were not very helpful. Both representatives at these stores thought there was nothing in particular for a senior-aged consumer versus any other consumer. When asked about senior buying habits for music players, they responded that a senior's concerns and interests are like any other consumer, and that there are no distinguishing features for that specific type of customer.

Customer sales representatievs at Best Buy and Radio Shack were a bit more helpful. They informed us that price isn't the primary objective when purchasing a music player. Instead, the resounding feature that representatives kept commenting on was that seniors are usually focused on finding the player that is the easiest to use. In fact, representatives were often asked to give demos on how to use certain players, and asked "How do I do ... ? " type of questions from seniors. In terms of form factor, size and weight were important traits to consider - a smaller system is better than a huge theatre-type system. It was also noted by the senior customer that music players were often used both for personal listening as well as for public gathering and parties.

Representatives also commented that seniors consider MP3-type music players (e.g. Apple's iPod) much too complicated. While the typical consumer may believe such players are portable, small, lightweight, and intuitive to use, seniors are turned off by both the form factor and supposedly blantant high tech appearance.

At the end of our shopping research, we determined that our music player should include two key features: 1) have an easy to use interface, and 2) be lightweight.