Week 3
HI. To decide on an execution that would successfully deliver my project idea, I will first have to do some analysis and branching out my thoughts.
Before I start listing out the things I want to do for my execution, I will first go through the different reading materials/resources that lead me to my idea.
Since my project is to introduce and educate people on the ecotourism places in Malaysia and gain their appreciation towards it, I figure, that I would first think about the content that would actually make my Target Audience care more. I google up some articles about what are the conditions that influence people to care more and stumble upon 2 articles.
Research on "How to make people care?"
- Create an emotional connection
- Teach them something
- Give them something
- Make them laugh
- Show them your softer side
This article is based more on how people deliver their content physically/verbally to others. Some points are quite irrelevant to me but some are still helpful from my own interpretations. The more relatable points are; Create an emotional connection, Teach them something and Show them your softer side. From my own POV, having an emotional connection through content is basically delivering content that my TA could relate and empathize with, while also content that they could learn from such as educational or inspirational content. "Show them your softer side", in my own interpretation, as a designer, is good to add some personal touches to the project to really portray the character.
- From Feelings to Change
- Join the Community
- Communicate in images
- Evoke emotion with intention
- Create meaningful call-to-action
- Tell better stories
Points from this article are a little similar to the previous article, however, this article is more fruitful and useful in guiding me. From Feelings to Change; how contents are being delivered could evoke different emotions which affect the different outcome. Join the Community is saying that for me to be able to deliver effective and relevant content, I will need to identify the community that is involve in the situation. Evoke emotion with intention; imagine scenarios that I am hoping people to do and think about how they will feel after doing it. through this, I would be able to deliver contents that could relate to their emotions. Create meaningful call-to-action; have a specific goal that I would like people to achieve and the goal is best to be relatable to their needs and are clear to them.
My thoughts:
Summarize from these 2 articles, I feel like I could focus on contents that could be relatable to my TA. Since from my previous research, people are mentioning about the lack of exposure of ecotourism spots on social media. I have an idea of creating a platform that could be used by this community of people for them to inspire and encourage one another.
Execution
First attempt
I have an idea of creating an app that would provide information on ecotourism spots to educate users and along with that, there will be a community sharing feature that allows users to share photographs and their experiences towards specific places for others to see.
The purpose of the information is to educate users on the specific places and the community sharing is for them to inspire and encourage one another to visit these specific places. My call-to-action of this app is: To LEARN and to EXPLORE.
I created a flow to have a better visualization on the core experience. And each experience has a specific feature assigned to them, and the kind of contents that I want to deliver through the features. The phases of experience according to sequence: LEARN ---- INSPIRE ---- SAVE ---- SHARE
LEARN; Provide users with knowledge and insights of specific places, possible contents are the species/culture/history/activities/transportation available
INSPIRE; Provide users an opportunity to go through others' experiences, possible contents are the community's personal experiences/tips/photographs/comments
SAVE; Provide users an action to bookmark places that they are interested in visiting, after bookmarking will be saved into their own personal profile
SHARE; Provide users a chance to share their own personal experiences, possible contents are users' personal experiences/tips/photographs/comments
My idea of this app is to EDUCATE ---- INSPIRE ---- ENCOURAGE ---- CONNECT. I have also thought about what could encourage and engage users towards this app. There were 3 possible features that I feel like it could motivate users:-
1. Volunteer/donation programs
- Collaborating with Tourism Malaysia or Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) to held or spread these programs in this app to community that is interested in it
- Examples of these programs are:- Volunteer to clean up/Volunteer to help plant a tree/Donate to help maintain a place
- Purpose: Able to gather this target community more easily, encourage them towards this area of interest
2. Social media platform to feature users
- Using Instagram/Facebook to feature photographs taken by the community and shared to the app
- This way it could also receive more exposure
- Purpose: Motivate users to share and explore more places
3. Personal explorer's journal
- Users are able to create their personal profile in-within the app to track their visits and stuffs they shared on the visited places
- Purpose: Allow users to leave their digital footprint, to have a sense of achievement after visiting the different places
After temporary settling down with these ideas in mind, I consulted the first advisor of the week.
Main remarks are:-
- the app currently do not serve a very significant purpose
- the purpose of this app need to be push further to really solve a significant problem faced by users
- this app need to have customer value, it could redefine by planning out a customer journey map
My thoughts:
While planning out the app, the concern of the sustainability of this app has always be in my mind. I feel like it have not reach the stage where users will actually value the functionality/purpose of this app. So I pretty much agree with my advisor about redefining the significant purpose/value of this app. I took up his advice on creating a customer journey app, where he also provided guidance on it.
Additional reading materials:
After consulting my first advisor, I quickly prep up my materials and research findings to start planning my customer journey app as I am meeting my second advisor on the next day.
I started by creating a summarized customer persona to build up a more solid customer journey scenario. After that, I started imagining the scenario that this customer is facing while using my app. And add-on to that, I decided to have a feature for customers to book their accommodation and purchase transportation tickets. I have this idea because my end goal is for users to visit these places, so I feel like these services are relevant and the transportation services would be my main focus as my TA are Malaysian, allowing them to be able to purchase different transportation (bus, train, ferry) in just one place would be helpful.
Summarize of the customer journey app:-
Scenario: Planning a short trip with friends
Awareness phase: Finding for a place to visit domestically, do not know where to start looking/planning
Engagement phase: Getting solid and sufficient information on the interested places
Evaluation phase: Satisfied and impressed with the reviews shared by others, have a range of accommodation to choose, detailed plan out schedule of the transportation available
Purchase phase: Clear and fledged-out itinerary of the entire trip is laid out properly upon checkout
Post-purchase phase: Details of the location and time of the accommodation and transportation are listed out properly and saved into users' personal profile
After laying out the entire scenario from start to end, I started planning the possible features in the app that could enhance each phase. Summarize of the possible features:-
Awareness phase: Promote and market this app through physical ads and social media
Engagement phase: Features; Community sharing, Personal profile, Programs organized
Evaluation phase: Services; Accommodation, Transportation, Customer service (chatbot)
Purchase phase: Clean and straight forward purchasing process, Additional recommendations
Post-purchase phase: As motivation; Notification via app/email, Point system for future discounts
My second consultation session with another advisor. The remarks are:-
- I have to identify the possible service providers that would work with my app as I am selling services
- I have to think about who is making this app and in the future who will be maintaining it
- I have to think about is this just a platform to outsource from other services or an individual app itself
My thoughts:
I do agree with the advises that were given because I am working with accommodation and transportation services, and there are abundance of agencies or travel sites that provides these services, I will need to have a service that would stand out from the market. So I started researching on the different travel sites, agencies, developers and organizations that would see potential in this app.
As I have yet to meet the third advisor on the next day, I have to quickly collect my thoughts and have something more solid to present. My research process:-
- Started with finding a possible investor or client; Malaysian Ecotourism Association, Tourism Malaysia, JustExplore Travel Sdn Bhd
- Finding possible service providers, this was the part where I started to lose confidence in the sustainability of my app.
After going through the different similar service providers, I realized that many of them provides travel packages that already covers transportations and some even covers accommodation. I started to think everything through again on whether this app is really necessary.
After doing more and more research findings and analysis, I started to question the sustainability and value of this app which also causes me to lose confidence and interest towards it. I initially believed that this app would help a community of people to get closer to local nature by introducing the different locations. However, I started straying further away from it by providing services and turning this app into a product that is in the market, which is not something that I am planning to achieve through this project. I realize I have no time to spare as I will be meeting my next advisor real soon. I need to speed up my thinking process and collect all my thoughts and process it.
That's all for now, stay tuned for the next blog and see how I deal with my current conflicts and concerns.
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