Taking her CUE
Gina Fong had a clear idea of what she wanted second-year students to learn from the new course she was asked to teach in the fall of 2024. She just didn’t know what to call the class.
The mission was crystal clear: Help students develop deep curiosity as researchers to give them a better chance of developing even deeper understanding of potential new customers and the deepest empathy for their pain points.
But the name for the course? That had Fong stumped until she took a cue from the course material and the program in which it would be taught: Northwestern's MMM Program: MBA + MS Design Innovation — A dual-degree designed for cross-functional leaders who build at the nexus of business strategy, human-centered design, and technology application.
"You have to want to enter someone else's world to understand who they are and develop empathy for them. Only then can you create a product, brand or service that meets their needs."
“The MMM program likes things that have three letters that stand for something,” said Fong, pointing to the program’s name, its pivotal fall quarter Research, Design, Build (RDB) course, and its capstone Business Innovation Lab (BIL). “That made it a little bit easier for me and created a double entendre most people don’t pick up on right away.”
Fong’s course – CUE – stands for the three traits at the heart of its lessons – Curiosity, Understanding, and Empathy. That the word is pronounced like the letter Q – often a substitute for the word “Question” – gives the course its secret meaning.
“The Q is perfect because you should be asking questions to better understand your customers,” said Fong, who also teaches marketing at Kellogg, where she was named outstanding professor of the year in 2023.
The purpose of the course is to bridge the gap between RDB and BIL. The goal is to give students a next-level addition to the foundational research skills learned in RDB.
“When students are in their second year, they have settled in and have a little bit more bandwidth to dive deeper into research concepts,” said Fong, who has spent more than three decades focused on consumer research. “We go more in-depth on how to build a discussion guide, what it looks like to build a screener and what a project scope is.”
That deep dive helps students provide more meaningful solutions to their industry partners during their BIL projects.
CUE purposefully keeps students in the theoretical realm and allows them to hone individual skills in a safe environment, free from potentially large career consequences.
“I made a very deliberate decision not to include a client, where students are on the hook in a real-world setting,” Fong said. “Students do work on a research project in an individual setting versus a team setting. I wanted to make sure that every person had the skillset. That only happens if you do the research individually.”
Without the safety net of a team, students must dig into all of the research, not just a portion, she said. That helps students become more well-rounded researchers and better able to contribute wherever the need may arise, both during BIL and post-MMM.
CUE has evolved and core concepts now include systematically and intentionally moving from curiosity to understanding to empathy as part of the product research process.
"Curiosity is the foundation for being an insightful designer or product manager," Fong said. "You have to want to enter someone else's world to understand who they are and develop empathy for them. Only then can you create a product, brand or service that meets their needs."
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Northwestern’s MMM Program is a fully integrated dual degree between the Kellogg School of Management and the Segal Design Institute at the McCormick School of Engineering. Students earn both an MBA and a Master of Science in Design Innovation.