Secondary Research After deconstructing the brief I started researching what was currently available that would answer the brief. RSA Examples AirBNB, Kodesk and Couch Surfing were mentioned on the RSA toolkit.
AirBNB AirBNB allows everyday people to stay in everyday people’s houses. Using a customer review system the user is able to pick somewhere to stay they feel comfortable with. Once they have concluded their stay they can then review their experience.
Couchsurfing Couchsurfing is a global community of 7 million people in more than 100,000 citieswho share their life, their world, their journey. Couchsurfing connects travelers with a global network of people willing to share in profound and meaningful ways, making travel a truly social experience.
Secondary Research More Examples Gumtree Swishing Swapz Big Wardrobe Task rabbit Social lending Spinster Etsy Kick Starter Dim Dom Voyable Park at my house Home exchange Bookmooch
Secondary Research I started doing more in depth research into the re-usable envelope as I thought it was a good idea for the project. The idea was to design an envelope that the more people bought, the more would be in circulation, eventually saving hundreds of thousand envelopes a month. This answered the brief perfectly as it hit the following judging criteria - environment and social benefit, design thinking, commercial awareness and magic. Unfortunately when I started doing more research I found that the idea had already been done well. See on on next slides.
LEE Seungho The solution has an envelope and a fastener separately. There are three glue spots on one side of the fastener that meet another side through three holes on top part of the envelop, which allows the user not to break the envelope but only the fastener when opening.
Primary Research
Mobile Applications After first reading the brief I had the idea of potenntially producing a mobile application as the main deliverable. From the RSA examples I started looking at examples of applications.
Tinder Tinder finds out who likes you nearby and connects you with them if you’re also interested. It’s the new way to meet people around you. Why is it popular? The unique feature of Tinder is the ultra fast connection to other people. It allows you to scroll through people you want to connect with by simply flicking through their pictures. I think it primarily for people looking for love. I personally don’t use this application. Dating sites are not new, I think its just the way the app is designed allows you to judge people based on appearance quickly which makes it successful.
Tinder Quick navigation makes the application easy to use.
Instagram Take a picture or video, choose a filter, then post to Instagram and share to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more. Application commercial worth? Instagram is hugely successful and was sold to Facebook for one billion dollars. Although it was worth that much to Facebook, it doesnt actually make any money as a stand alone application. There is no advertising.
Mobile advertising revenue increased nearly 1.5X in 2011, to top out at $1.6 billion for the year.
Monetisation strategy Getting paid by users or getting paid by advertisers?
Who Pays More for Apps: Users or Advertisers? The majority of users resist paying. On the other hand, advertisers are MUCH more willing to pay developers than users are. Just like developers, advertisers need to market their product.
Free apps are popular in terms of downloads. Only 20% of paid apps are downloaded more than 100 times and only 0.2% of paid apps are downloaded more than 10,000 times.
On the flipside, 20% of free apps get 10,000 or more downloads.