Archive for ‘Announcements’

Name: Mike and Jennifer Taylor

Occupation: Architects

Location: Prescott, Arizona

Outdoorsmen, campers and avid mountain bikers.

Mike and Jennifer love to go camping but they usually only go to the same old campgrounds. One of the couples they go camping with told Jennifer about (app) anyhow it has really helped them find a new place to camp and gave them ideas for future camping locations. Jennifer got the app and used it   to find a nice place to camp with space for their tents and trailer in a national forest, that is also close to the mountain biking trials that they love to ride.

 Name: Ralph Lastnamenson

Occupation: Extreme Guy (REI for money)

Location: Phoenix, Arizona

Adventurer and extreme lifestyle liver. Loves the woods, and loves helping people learn to love the woods.

Ralph works at one of the R.E.I stores down in the valley. He often gets lots of rich snobby customers who claim to be camping experts, but don’t ever know where to go camping at. After dealing with lots of returns and upset customers because their outdoor experience wasn’t what they thought it would be, Ralph sought out something to help aid and guide is weary customers. Ralph came across (App) and now recommends it to all of his customers because he has had great success with it himself as an easy tool to help out the novice camper find a great place to camp, wether its at a site or out in the woods. (Even though Ralph is extreme and doesn’t need the app obviously). He said that (App) made fining a  camp ground near a lake with hiking trials, in the woods around Williams, AZ (his specified search) was extremely easy and the experience went over all well.

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.

Im going with the first option probably.