Zach Wulf's Archive

With “Word of Mouth”, the user should be able to:

1) Quickly and easily find relevant information about a local event or location.

2) Easily contribute information to a local event or location.

3) Be able to share information regarding a local event or location with others through any digital medium.

Name: Matt and Jenny Hiperson

Occupation: Social Media Consultant Advertisement Analysts

Age: 28 & 26

Location: Abilene, TX

Having moved to Abilene from San Francisco, Matt and Jenny are struggling to adjust to life in a smaller city. Matt previously worked for an advertising agency on social media and viral expansion, and was transferred to West Texas to establish a new, cutting edge firm in an experimental program by his company. The couple work from their home in the nicer neighborhoods near Lytle, but they often feel disconnected from the city. They are constantly online and never spend a moment away from a screen, leading to frustration when trying to find any information regarding Abilene businesses or events. Recently Matt and Jenny were tipped off by an acquaintance to check out a new site called {site/app name}, which could show them any information about local places around Abilene. To their surprise, they were able to easily find local restaurants and cultural centers that filled their sophisticated needs and read helpful reviews from other users around town. They were also happy to discover the mobile app version of the site, which they now use primarily when bored or checking to see the latest local events in Abilene.

Name: Stacy Daniels

Occupation: Student

Age: 18

Location: Abilene, TX

Stacy is an excited freshman who has just moved to Abilene to start her degree in Music, and is a seasoned Abilene veteran. She has several family ties to the city, and while growing up in Fort Worth she has visited frequently for various holidays and events. Stacy knows the ins and outs of Abilene, but she is very inexperienced with newer technology. Having just received her new iPhone, Stacy has spent the past few weeks playing around and downloading every app that looks interesting to her. Upon searching for “Abilene” in the App Store, Stacy discovers {site/app name} and discovers all sorts of “hole-in-the-wall” businesses she never knew existed. When not busy with classwork, Stacy uses the app to look up the location of a local music shop and purchase new strings for her guitar. Later on in the semester, Stacy finds out about local Broadway shows via the app and follows a link to the site for purchasing tickets. Stacy is never aware of the desktop site’s existence.

I am working on a sort of “City Hub” for small to medium sized local communities. The principle idea behind the website/app is to address the problem in college towns and other smaller cities where many local businesses, churches or cultural centers do not have any online presence whatsoever, and that it is very hard to find out what may be going on in town on any given night.

Before the interviews I was pursuing a social component to this, similar to facebook pages. Each business, school, church, event, etc. would have its own “hub”, and users would be able to discuss various topics in their respective forums or boards. After my interviews I believe that any social component would be antithetical to the idea of a convenient gathering place for all local places in a city.

My interviews were varied, and consisted of 50% college students/50% young adults or elderly in Abilene. Here are some of the conclusions I came to:

1) One of the most surprising things I gleaned from the interviews was that 9 out of 10 people said they discover new places around town primarily through word of mouth. I had thought at least a few younger people would use apps or websites, but even college students said they heard about where to eat or go to church from others.

2) People from big cities tend to enjoy going out and looking for new things to do in Abilene, and those from smaller or same-sized cities really preferred to stick to the places they knew about.

3) One of the questions I asked was “Have you ever been frustrated trying to find information about a local business online when there isn’t any?” To my surprise, a good number of users said they didn’t get frustrated, but just stopped looking altogether.

This information is really critical to developing a service that provides clear, accurate information and is usable enough by a wide range of demographics. In addition to the class discussion, I have shifted priorities from a ‘discussion hub’ to more of a yellow pages with reviews and media, focusing on local community.

Filter Questions

• Do you have/use Facebook?
• Have you ever visited a Facebook Page?

1. How long have you lived in this city? How did you first come here, and what do you currently do?

2.

3. How do you currently find out about local restaurants/events/music/churches?

4. Have you ever been frustrated trying to find information about a local event or business online?

5. Do you enjoy looking for new places to go around town?

6. Do you feel like there are things going on in this city that you don’t know about?

7. When looking for a new place to go, is this usually done at home beforehand or in the car on your phone/tablet?

8. If there was one location where you could view every local place in your city, would you frequently visit it or only visit if you needed to?

9. What kind of information would you like to see about businesses who do not have an online presence if you’re looking for them online?

10. Would it make you feel better knowing that there was one place you could always go to find information regarding local places and events in town?

1) A “CityHub” website (desktop and mobile) that would aggregate businesses, schools, churches, entertainment and cultural locations within a small or average sized city. Key feature operates similar to Facebook Pages in which every location would have its own “Hub” with discussion boards, media and news. Relies on small cities with a sense of local pride (Abilene).

2) A full-fledged Android/iOS text editor with syntax highlighting and autocomplete (optional). Would be able to integrate with FTP/SSH apps and work over both data and WiFi networks.

3) A social network built around the core concept of family, similar to Path. Would be tightly knit, focus primarily on privacy and security. Families link up via networks and share everything privately by default; nothing is shared outside family networks. Addresses the need many families have for keeping up with relatives separated by distance while maintaining privacy online. Family networks could fracture into subgroups if needed.

4) An iOS/Android/Blackberry app for storing all mobile game saves and allowing for backups online. Similar to what OpenFeint has accomplished for high scores, this system would be primarily open source and voluntary. Addresses the issue many mobile users face when switching phones or modifying devices and subsequently losing all game save data. Would also be cross platform and allow for easy exportation. Key focus is on eventual adoption by all major mobile game companies.

5) A media and content sharing site with a primary and major focus on content over discussion. Similar to Reddit/Pinterest/Canvas but with absolutely no discussion between users or social media integration whatsoever. Removes the constant need for moderation and addresses the problem that many users hungry for new content on the internet face daily when distracted by comment sections, forums and bickering between a website’s frequent users.

This project was not as daunting of a challenge for me as the last one, but I still suffered from several problems that hindered my final output.

In terms of progress, I believe I am getting much better at manipulating Photoshop and keeping things logically organized. This project required the greatest number of folders and layers so far, but I kept a pretty good handle on it throughout the process. I am also improving marginally in maintaining a consistent style or tone in my work, I think. From previous assignments I can see improvement during the process when developing different directions for elements. Even though they weren’t radically different, I think they were better than the directions from the last project.

Conceptually I am still having trouble breaking the traditional mold of how certain sites should look, and tend to stick to the confines of what encompasses a traditional blog or restaurant site. I still need to improve on the process, and finishing sketches before working on elements or rough compositions. I feel that if these things come first, I will be ultimately more happy with the end results.