18A - Create a Customer Avatar

She is a 20-year-old college student who attends the University of Florida. She currently lives in an off-campus apartment complex called the retreat in Gainesville, Florida. She is a fun, outgoing, passionate young women, who had devoted her whole life to her academics. She is a hard-working college student who goes to class and or campus 5 days a week. Like I said, her studies are extremely important to her, so attending class is crucial for her. With school and clubs, she also works 20 hours a week in Gainesville in order to afford her apartment, school, food, etc. Her parents are amazing and she is super close to them, but, like many, she has to pay her own way through school.

When she has spare time, which isn’t much, she loves spending the night watching Netflix movies with her boyfriend. He favorite movie is If I Stay, and loves any and all romantic movies. She doesn’t go out much and enjoys staying in when she has a free night. She drivers her 2013 Silver Ford Focus around Gainesville and to work. However, she isn’t able to drive it to campus because she can’t afford a parking pass and doesn’t want to deal with the stress of finding parking on campus daily. So, she takes and relies on the RTS bus system to get her to and from campus. With academics and being involved at UF being so important to her, she is in need of a reliable RTS bus app that doesn’t make her late or stressed. She HATES being late. She stresses over everything and is very anxious, so when the bus doesn’t show up, she begins to panic. She likes everything to go as planned and has a hard time when things don’t.

What do I have in common with her? I actually have a lot in common with her. Most people I interviewed for my assignments were also very similar to me. So, I thought hard about what I’ve learned in my interviews and made someone who is very similar to me and has characteristics of the people I interviewed. My avatar and I both are really into our academics and have jobs in order to afford living in Gainesville and school. We both take the RTS bus app to and from campus. We also both stress out over every little thing and hate when things don’t go as planned. We both hate being late and are in need of a reliable RTS bus app to get us to and from campus on time with no stress.

I don’t think this is a coincidence. While thinking about what I was going to develop in this class, I thought about things that I was in need of and a reliable RTS bus app was one of them. While I was creating my avatar, I couldn’t help but make her part of myself, part of who I am and what my needs are. This is why I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we have so much in common. My avatar is actually part of myself and part of the people I interviewed.