Applying Design Thinking
Design thinking surrounds us in every aspect of life–Even in basic room decor.
LED Strip Lights have gained increasing popularity over the past several months due to the app TikTok. As many popular creators have these types of lights in their rooms, or in their videos, many fans and viewers began to purchase them for their own rooms. This style of lighting has been around for several years now: in college fraternity houses, personal homes, and entertainment venues, but the sales began to rise in this market at the start of COVID-19.
The typical user of this product is the 15-24-year-old age group. Many teenagers have them in their rooms at home and most college students I know have them in their dorm. When trying to install these lights in my recording studio, the main issue I found with in this product was the inability to create a chain of lights to make a longer light strand. Without this feature it allows the user to add onto the device, yet instead the user must now purchase a new product. In my opinion, this is the biggest downfall of the product as it functions well and is sleek looking. To utilize the lights I had purchased, without having to spend more money, I figured out how to cut and sodder the LED strips at a certain point in the circuit to create one continuous light strand.
There are other companies that offer products that allow you to connect other strands together, but for this company’s sake there is a solution that could help them rise above other competitors. If the company added plugs on the end of each light strip that would be a big step in progress. But if they included the option to purchase more light strands, not including the battery pack, and gave the option to have smaller connectable pieces for corners and curves, they would be able to have a competitive advantage. In terms of advertising, utilizing social media would be the best method to target this demographic, TikTok especially. Successfully run social media campaigns will allow their brand to rise in popularity among this audience due to the amount of screen time this demographic gets.
