Forming An Opportunity Belief

1.
Beginning Point: The problem that I think exists is University of Florida's small amount of parking hinders students who need/want to drive to campus.

2.
What is the unmet need?
Limited amount of parking on UF campus especially by the business school.
Who has the need?
UF students, faculty, tourist/visitors
Where did the need come from?
The need has been around ever since I have been attending UF so 2 years but could be longer than that amount of time.
What are people doing about this need?
People have to use alternative methods to get to campus. Some people have to take the bus, walk or park their car close to campus and walk the rest.
Opportunity Exist: 75%

3.
Prototypical customer: I would say any student that attends the university with a car living farther than 0.7 miles from campus.

4. 
Interactions with Prototypical Customers 
#1 - The first person I interviewed said she does not feel that the problem of no parking exists during the day for her because she either rides the bus or walks. However, she sees the problem at night when she has extracurricular activities on campus in the evening. She said they start before parking is lifted so she has to ride the bus but when they are over it is dark out and she does not want to be waiting for a bus in the dark by herself. This is the time in which she finds the real practical use of having parking close to the business school. She seemed satisfied with how she is dealing with it because most of the time her friends pick her up, but believes their is a better solution than having to nag her friends for a ride.
#2 - The second person I interviewed believes that parking is a huge problem for him as it puts him at an inconvenience. He believes that parking close to the business school or anywhere around the school perimeter would help him out a lot. He says right now he has to plan to leave so early for class because the timing of the bus would either put him to class 30 minutes earlier or 10 minutes late. He says the bus is sufficient but a parking garage of some sort would be worth the money. He said he lived on campus last year and did not have a car so he never really understood the parking situation until now. He says he lives off campus with a car and no scooter so the problem escalated as most of his classes are in person rather than online.
#3 - The last person I interviewed sees the problem of no parking because of lot of his friends complain about it to him but for him he does not mind it because he has a scooter. He said even with the amount of scooter parking it is still hard to find a spot sometimes so he can only imagine the pain a person has trying to park on campus with a car.

5.
Reflection
After speaking with potential customers, I was not really surprised by their responses. I feel like it makes sense that someone with a scooter does not find the parking situation horrible because there is parking for scooters spread out all around and through campus. They never even see the problem as it is does not relate to them. In the same way, I am not surprised that the people that just have a car at school find the parking situation horrible and inconvenient. I learned that there really is an opportunity with this situation whether it is building a parking garage or some other alternative method to solve this problem.

6.
Summary
My belief did not change from the time I started and after the interactions with the potential customers. I realize that there is still the unmet need of parking but maybe not all students have it especially if they have a scooter. I believe most of my original idea is there and there is something to deal with when it comes to the parking situation at the university. I think customer feedback is huge when an entrepreneur is looking at their idea and how successful it can be. I definitely think the entrepreneur should adapt their idea to tailor the needs of the customer.  If the customer is telling that their honest opinions about a situation that is valuable help that needs to be noted. The entrepreneur should not make their idea about what they want but rather the customer wants because they are the people with the money and unmet need.