G R O U P
Fieke Brienen Isabelle Smith Beau van Essen Hao-Hsuan Wang Asier Aretxabaleta
I N F O R M A T I O N
Dutch (group leader) Dutch Dutch Taiwanese Spanish
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P R E L U D E “Woofmouth is a start-up project aimed at launching a review platform based on the thought that a friend-to-friend network is very effective. Woofmouth is a platform, which is connected to Facebook to realize the friend-to-friend reviewing.� Henri CEO Woofmouth This report is about improvements for Woofmouth. At first we will show our research and findings followed by our new concept. Later on in the report we will show visuals on how this concept would work and look like. The styleguide is a separate document.
DEBRIEFING To start of this concept, below you will find our debriefing. In this debriefing you will find all information about the old concept and our thoughts on a new concept. From there we have been working towards a whole new concept.
Problem (in 1 sentence) Woofmouth needs Angel investors to launch the product, to do so we need to attract active users, choose a vertical to review on (the concept is too broad) and adapt the design to the concept and the target groups. There are not enough active users at this moment There is no steady subject to review about According to the client the design of the concept is already out-dated (since Facebook it out-dated) There are no Angel investors yet Their goal “We want to continue our dream. A dream based on our belief that the exchange of friend-to-friend feedback is becoming more important for brands, products and services and therefore will challenge advertising even more in the near future. Always smart to analyse the target group and their media behaviour. On the other hand, for this moment we targeted you (students) as our target group. So you should be familiar with the mindset of your ‘peers’.”
Assignment (assumptions + target group) 1. We have to think of (a) steady subject(s) to let the users review about 2. We have to post reviews on Woofmouth to make it attract more users and let people know what the concept is about 3. We have to set up a project presentation for Angel investors 4. We have to change the design of the product and create a better user experience 5. Engage the platform 6. Create traction/come up with marketing ideas to involve peers 7. Make a presentation for Angel Investors 8. Make alternative (more contemporary) design interface (for instance see Ello) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
We have to research the friend-to-friend review concept We have to research what students want (to) review(s) about We have to research students We have to research how to create traction We have to research what the users need on review sites/applications We have to research online activity for students
Optional 1. Thing about ideas for specific markets (products/services) or target group (verticals) for which Woofmouth’s features are very relevant 2. Come up with an alternative name/logo
Success factors According to the client there are two success factors in the concept, which are the following: 1. Working with audiovisual content Working with audiovisual content makes it more attractive for users to read and look at. This way the users get a specific idea of the look of the reviewed subject. 2. Friend-to-friend works better than peer-to-peer Taking advice from a friend is easier and more trustworthy than taking advice from a stranger. We think there is only one: 1. Working with audiovisual content Working with audiovisual content can be a success factor if the users have the right knowledge on how to create good/quality content. We do not completely agree on the success of the friend-2-friend concept. Many people ask their friends for advice or experiences, but depending on the content or questions some people might want an expert’s opinion. Opportunities Woofmouth should be a mobile platform By making the platform mobile, the product would be accessible on tablets and smartphones. This way users can easily post images/videos and content while they are (online) in the restaurant/bar. Target group specifics Woofmouth would like to focus on students at first, in the future it will be available to all (dutch) Facebook users The specifics of the target group are the following: 1. The average age is 18-25 years 2. Smartphone users (91% for 18-25 year in 2014) 3. OV-chip card to travel for free during the week/weekend 4. Biking/driving to their destination (when close to home) 5. Communication through online platforms 6. Limited budgets Barriers 1. The platform is only available on a website Woofmouth is an online platform. This way people can always see an updated version of the content. The platform is not yet created for other platforms. This is a barrier because the platform now has limited access for mobile and tablet users. A normal website is not responsive in the right way for mobile and tablet users. We think Woofmouth should be accessible on an application or via a responsive mobile website. 2. For this first stage Woofmouth would like to review on specific content: 1. Utrecht 2. Students 3. Restaurants/Bars (for now) 4. Nightspots This target group is very specific and small in comparison to the future target group “(dutch) Facebook users�. A lot of students who study in Utrecht live in other cities. This way they might not be that interested in restaurants and bars in Utrecht (at least less interested than people living in Utrecht). When they go to restaurants and bars in other cities, they could not post reviews on these restaurants/bars on Woofmouth.
Insights The following points are insights on the concept 1. Friend-2-friend reviews do not always work when you need an experts opinion 2. The quality of the photos or videos made in restaurants and bars is not that good. 3. This has to do with light, composition, use of specific cameras, knowledge and other elements. 4. The product should be available on smartphones/tablets as an application so students can post reviews ‘on-the-go’ 5. Posting a review should be fun to do - make it exciting (maybe by making a challenge) 6. Making the design of the platform more attractive and user friendly, than it is now, should attract more users 7. The logo could be more attractive 8. Reviewing food and restaurants has been done by a lot of other companies and brands - maybe a different subject could be more attractive (it has been done by many bloggers as well) 9. We should do research on what subjects are popular to review on by students at the moment. Features 1. Use a friend-2-friend instead of review-to-review Research shows it is more effective to read a friends review rather than reading a review from an unknown person. For this reason Woofmouth is connected to the Facebook platform. Facebook shows all reviews which are placed by your friends. This way through your connections, you will know where to go or what to buy. 2. Be comparable to Instagram and Facebook Facebook is the connecting platform for the Woofmouth concept. The UPS of this review concept is using the audiovisual content in stead of only text. This is comparable to instagram, which shows all the nice things you see and do. This is in some way the same idea of Woofmouth; sharing experiences. 3. Image and video based platform The content is user generated. We can adjust the platform (in a visual way) to the users wishes. We can do this as long as it is an image and video based platform. 4. Audiovisual uploads: clips/pictures The meaning of the idea is to use images and sound to create a review on the right level. The images/videos are a way to engage people with experiences from other people. By uploading different media the user can get a better idea of the restaurant/bar. 5. Uploading content on a platform via easy social media entrances The producers would like us to use social media platforms to engage the target groups to place reviews on restaurants/bars etc. through easy entrances. This way the user is most likely to post the reviews, because it is easy and fast.
RESEARCH We have done a lot of research about several subjects. The full research will be in the attachments, but we will give short conclusions on our findings. SOCIAL MEDIA - FIEKE To find out what devices and networks young people use, we have researched their social media and device usage. This CBS (2705-2014) shows that 88% of students in the Netherlands have access to a digital device to be able to log in to our product. 85% of the students are in possession of a smartphone with internet and 90% of the students has a Facebook account. With this knowledge we decided to keep the Facebook connection within the product. Statistics show that students are being more and more online. Besides the smartphones, laptops and tablets are also very important when being online. For this reason we considered making an application and a website. This way people on the road could easily access the product. The reason for this is because we have to adapt the design to the user experience design which we think should be designed for mobile use. But it should also be available for computers/laptops since they are also used a lot by students. There should be a composite platform. NON-COMMERCIAL EARNINGS - FIEKE According to stratumstrategie (30-08-2013) there are five ways to earn money through a non commercial application. Developing an application costs a lot of time and money, so there has to be a benefit to offering the application for free. These five ways to earn money, make earning money possible: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Offering advertisement while using the application Freemium model; making a limited area accessible to the free-downloaders next to a paid model which has access to the full application Brand building Data-sales 2-sided business model
Only one of these models is usable for our product, because of the following reasons. 1. Offering advertisement while using the application could be useful. We know it will bring along many irritations, but many businesses would want to offer their advertisement when the app is being used by many people. 2. There is no additional value for us to set up a free- and premium model for our product. We could not offer anything more in a premium model because that would not be attractive for our users. 3. We will not offer any other products besides this one product. 4. We will not make our users fill in any information about themselves. This is not necessary because it is connected to Facebook and we can not sell that information to other companies, because it is no valuable information anymore. 5. We can not benefit from a 2-sided business model the same as from data-sales.
C O N C E P T I N G In this chapter we will explain our concept with all its features. First of all we will expose the whole concept and discuss all technical elements and functionalities as well as the restrictions for those elements. As a second we will show a Customer Journey Map with mapping and a Flowchart on how the application should work. After that we will hand over our strategy on how we think we can attract students to use our application.
CONCEPT Our new concept is not that different from the old ‘review’ concept. Reviews are meant to be serious and they are very informative. When people look for reviews they are looking for the facts. Pictures and videos could add something extra, but they will never be the most important part. Based on this we decided to think of something else that is less serious and more fun to do. That is when we made up the ‘I recommend’ concept. Friends love to recommend stuff to each other, either on facebook or in real life. So why not create a platform where you can share anything and anywhere with all your friends? We did want to add something special, because sharing what you like is more of a “Facebook” kind of thing. Exchange students always have a hard time finding the right places to go. This means doing groceries at cheap markets, going to nice shops, having a beer at a fun place and many more things. This app will now be all about sharing the best/your favourite spots with (other) exchange students. Now the concept is no longer only friend-to-friend but more about student-to-student. Of course out of this application you can make and find new friends. The idea is to establish contact between exchange students or between exchange and local students. The possibility to upload photos and videos is still the most important factor in this concept. We want to create an Instagram like platform where users can share pictures and short movies of places and things they recommend with other students using the app and also with their friends. The platform will be a mobile app with a built in photo and video functionality. FUNCTIONALITIES • Share with everyone using the app or just with friends • Informational, but in a fun way • See what other students recommend you • The possibility to see what your friends recommend • Recommend anything from restaurants to dentists • Choose a location and see nearby recommendations • Only in Utrecht (for now) • Share your uploads with friends who you think will like it • All in English TECHNICAL FEATURES • Facebook log-in • Take photos or videos in the app and share straight away • Upload and search by tags • Select icons to specify locations • Add the location manually or use your phone’s GPS • Video could be 15 seconds max • See all photos and videos of this recommendation (or add your own) • The possibility to add filters to your pictures and videos • Possibility to share your recommendation on Facebook • 8 main icons: 1. Restaurant 2. Bar 3. Shop 4. Club 5. Outdoors 6. Entertainment 7. Sports 8. Services
HOMEPAGE The most important part of one social network is the homepage, the screen where users spend most of the time when using the app. That’s why it is necessary and very important to choose or select what the user is going find in that screen. FAVORITES One of the features or options Xchange app will offer is the “add to favorite” one. Based on the “like” button of other popular apps such as Facebook or Instagram, but with the difference that when the user taps favorite photos or videos those are saved in the user’s profile, like this the user can look whenever he/she wants all those places (photos/videos) saved before. The option to go to this folder would be in a corner of the homepage, because principally this one would show the most popular places taking into account the number of times the photo/video has been added to someone’s favorites. Like that the user can search amongst the most popular places between all the exchange students using the app, or just on his/her favorite places saved before. As a place recommendation app, the user would be just a tool for letting the rest know that good place, so we can say the protagonist of this concept is the place and not the user. That’s why the prize for the user would be just the popularity of having lot’s of “favorites” on his/her photo or video. Also the deal with the universities explained before would be an encouragement for sharing content. However the prize for those most popular places would be the visit of all the exchange students that would have seen that this place is very popular. VIDEO The rapid growth of smart devices has important implications for anybody involved in social network. In the generation of social network, one of the most popular activities is consuming video content. People tend to be attracted by pictures and videos but will feel bored if they were too long. Compared to other mobile apps allow users to film and edit videos between 6 to 36 seconds like Instagram, Vine, Keek, Viddy, Cinemagram. We also consider that the users might clip everything recommended and upload by wifi. Then we found the length of 15 seconds would be more appropriate. Since video is hard to upload, also spends much data allowance. On that way, users can edit how they want it to be, and easier to upload as well. THE FEATURES OF CLIPS 1. 15 seconds Users are able to cut their video arbitrarily in 15 seconds. 2. Filters Considering that clips in some places like restaurants might be dark. There are some options embedded in the app, such as Brightness, Contrast and Filters. 3. Message Users can check in and leave messages below. Sharing their motivation and reasons of recommendation. 4. Just be creative There is no restriction or rules, users can edit how they want it to be.
SUCCES FACTORS 1. Friend-to-friend recommendation Telling your friends about fun places to go is very popular. Many sites, brands and features are build upon this fact. This is also one of the main ideas Facebook was built upon. This factor is one we are implanting into our concept. The recommendation factor seems to be more successful than the reviewing factor. Simply telling your friends fun places to go is more attractive, easy and fun than reviewing ‘’why’’ it is fun. 2. Audiovisual and filter usage As seen on photos on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and many more photo-based application these applications all have a feature to apply filters to your photos. These features are being used by many people before uploading a photo. Mostly because filters make the photo more attractive or ‘’less ugly’’. Many people think content is more attractive when audiovisual information is added. This information adds a new dimension. This dimension makes it able for users to imagine and see what the locations look like. The locations will be more attractive to go to if it is proven to be good looking and fun to go to. 3. Searching by hashtags This makes it easier to find the specific place(restaurant/bar/club/park) you are looking for. You can search by location, sort of place or maybe even by time (diner, lunch, sunset etc) 4. GPS function To make it easy to locate and remember your favorite places, stores and things 5. Using icons The usage of icons makes the app more useful to all the exchange students coming from all over the world, it is essential to use a global communication to reach our target group. 6. Positive recommendations As a recommendation site we want to emphasize the positive action of recommending to someone to go somewhere, just because you want to share that good place with that person. Also as some studies say the positivity is trendy so we want just to focus on the positive recommendations and not on the negative ones, due to this would be closer to a review site more than a recommendation site, and we don’t want that. OPPURTUNITIES Making the application available for all cities and countries If this recommendation concept is to be a success, it would be a great oppurtunity to be able to post recommendations from all over the Netherlands or maybe even the whole world. Creating an application instead of a responsive/mobile website By creating an application you have more possibilities to add different features such as a camera/video option that works flawless and a filter option to apply on the audiovisual content. Changing the logo and brand name By changing the logo and brand name we could come up with a combination that fits the concept better. Maybe the barking dog is a bit farfetched.
XCHANGE “Xchange”, an app to help exchange students to share the information with their friends more quick and easy. Aims at the exchange students, this app established on building up a platform for sharing information. Thus, we name this app as “Xchange”, which is transcribed from “exchange”. The range of “Exchange” is extensive. Except sharing information, it also implies exchanging the life experiences and affection with friends. So, in this app, we offer exchange students a brand new way to get acclimated to a new environment quickly. Students can find any restaurant, feature spots, shops or anything recommended by their friends. We focus on “Recommendation”, so that the information in this app which is not good enough could be screened out. Besides, exchange students come from all over the world, so we expect the name of this app is more flexible to spread across the world, not just in Utrecht. We hope that no matter where are you from, this name is very accessible in different culture backgrounds. Therefore, we name it as “Xchange”, we think “Xchange” is the best choice to correspond to the idea.
FLOWCHART There are two seperate flowcharts. The first one, below, is a flowchart for the application and the second one is for a responsive website. They are both in the same style. The only difference is that the website has a few less functionalities, since we want to encourage the use of the application.
Source 1: Application flowchart
Source 2: Website flowchart
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP To prove to you that our application will work, we made a CJM. With this journey you will see that the app solves a lot of issues exchange students run in to when arriving in the Netherlands. With this app they will be guided through the city and meet many new friends. The steps will be explained below. We created a Customer Journey Map to analyze the overall story from an exchange student’s perspective of their relationship with an organization, service, and our product. We also plotted out their emotional landscapes at each touch point to represent how they feel. And divided the whole process into 4 stages : Apply to a university, Arrive in your new city, Settle down in a house, and Social Contact. The following are the details in each category.
LOGO Designing a new logo for this concept was really hard. We tried very many different options and we finally came to a great and simple logo. The logo is the center of attention and really focusses on exchange students and exchanging experiences and information. The logo is exactly what we wanted to bring across. If you want to know more about this design and the usage, there is a styleguide in the attachments.
WIREFRAMES The next step, after designing a logo, was figuring out what the screens and wireframes should look like. We wanted to keep the application very easy and user friendly. We put in a few characteristics from other applications like Instagram and Facebook. We used these features because they work really well and fit our users expectations of how an application would have to work. 1
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FINAL SCREENS The final screens were designed and developed on basis of the wireframes and the styleguide. The result was greater then we had expected. The screens are based on a vertical iPhone 6 screen.
C A M P A I G N In this chapter we will explain our strategy to attract espescially Dutch students to commit to our cause by helping exchange students with fun and beautiful places to go to. As a second we also have a strategy on how to get exchange students in contact with the product.
STRATEGY To sell our product to the users, we first need a strategy on how this product is going to work and how it is going to sell. We need a strategy on how we want to put our product on the market. First of all it is necessary to divide the target group and create a different strategy for each group. These groups are: exchange students (foreigners) and dutch students (locals). EXCHANGE For exchange students the app would have to be connected with all universities in the Netherlands. By connecting all universities (who accept exchange students) to the application, every student that enters the study program in the Netherlands will get in contact with this application. Since all universities already send out information about the SSH (Short Stay Housing), they could just as easily add in a flyer with information on our application. Because of the success of SSH, we can say that exchange students trust the information and products recommended by the universities. LOCAL Although for local students or exchange who are already established in Utrecht the strategy would be similar but not the same. Similar in the sense of dealing with the universities, that is, offering some prizes to the students to become more attractive and to invite the students uploading content. This prize could be a free coffee with the first upload, and the next free coffees with every 5 new uploads. Anyway this would be discussed with the universities to get to a deal, maybe some of them prefer to give free coffees, other ones free copies or whatever. Of course before this or to let people know this prizes or deals, the first step would be to make public the app, here comes the different part compared with the strategy with the exchange students. It’s very important to take advantage of the face to face possibility with the locals. For that posters and flyers would be made and distributed in the universities, making clear the prizes offered with the uploads (the most attractive point for the local students). Besides during the launch of the app, the first days, would be a good idea as well to place stands of the app with flyers and direct downloading points, to make it easier for the students. REGULAR CAMPAIGN Aswell for local- as exchange students we need a regular campaign to let them know this product exists. We want to do that by making attractive posters on abri and A1 to show in bus stops and on walls and other advertisement signs. This campaign is not meant to explain the whole concept. It is functional to create the brand and let them know the name. The poster will say something about the application, but it will not give away any functions. It is a really basic poster focussing on beautiful images. Since we already have specified advertisement for locals as well as for exchange students, we want to make our message even more strong.