Wanderlost

Today Emi, Max and I compiled the portfolio and made the presentation for tomorrow. We used everyone's work and put it together, it is nice to see it as a complete portfolio. We have added appendices of some of our initial research and minutes from meetings.I constructed the Appendix of examples, to show how the databases (initially) would be compiled, and that we have some concrete examples of places apart from the ones used in the user scenarios and profiles. 

As project manager I feel I had less to do in this project than in the previous one. I mainly needed to make sure the subgroups were communicating amongst themselves, and with eachother. I found it hard sometimes to ensure this, as over the break many of us were away for at least a short period. 

In order to complete my allotted part of the project, I needed to research what makes a good user profile, and why developers make them. 

If the user is the centre of the design process, it is more likely that the application will be user-friendly, realistic, easy to use, and make sense.

The user profiles I constructed are representations of three target segments. There is no "one" perfect user. Therefore those that I constructed had to represent different elements of our imaginary perfect user.  

"The more believable the story, the better representation the persona is of users; the more accurate the representation, the more likely our decisions will reflect the user’s needs."  

The user profiles that I wrote were reasonably easy to construct once I had the central persona. I tried to identify the main pain points and motivations of each user, shown through their lifestyle, profession, interests and background.

1. Louis Badis - The Wanderer - Louis was meant to be the youngest persona - and the one who was the most prone to just wandering around London without any particular purpose. He likes to explore, but he wanders because he knows the city well and likes ending up in new places. 

2. Viv Redman - The London Old-hand - Viv was inspired by someone who loves London's history and loves a particular author - and that is their motivation point. They want to find things related to that author, and their favourite book. Viv is a teacher, so that's where her innate love of literature comes from. All the personas have this, but they also need to have more than just that to be someone who will use Wanderlost. 

3. Jessica Brompton  - The Tourist-  we needed one of them to be a proper tourist. This tourist however needs to have a deeper desire to explore than a tourist in London for the first time. They have to want to escape the generic tourist track. They have to want to explore further. They have to be familiar with London enough to do this - so that's why I chose her to have family in the UK and to have been coming here for a long time. 

4. Matthew Rhodes - The Young Professional - This persona Lottie created. He is meant to be new to London, with inclination and time to wander around when he can. He uses the app when on the way to somewhere else. 

Screen shots from App research

1. British Film Locations

2.Dickens Dark London

3. My London Story

The market research necessary fell into two categories: 

1) apps or websites that are similar in some way to our idea

2) authors and works that we could use in the proposal as examples - that could be potentially included in the app. 

......

1. Apps

I firstly researched apps or websites that provided self-guided tours, walking tours etc.  

The best app for this was Walking with Dickens by Scout London. This app provided a lot of inspiration for us, and helped a great deal in terms of the overall interaction and features we wanted to include. The app is free, and it relates to a company that provides actual walking tours of London for £10 per person. 

There is another Dickens one (amongst those developed for the 200th anniversary of his birth in 2012) is Dark London by Brothers and Sisters Creative.

Another good one, that was more about London - less about Dickens - was My London Story by Sisters Creative, also a free app. This app publishes unknown writers, whose stories can be located in specific spots around the capital. This app is divided into 'Editions' that you download, ie, sets of stories that come in sets of 10. The design is a bit ugly, but the initial start up graphics are good. The icons once you are in a story, to go back to the menu, the map and highlight/bookmark are all a bit ambiguous. 

Another app, that is similar to ours except that it focuses on film locations instead of book locations, is British Film Locations app, (free) by etvoline owned by the British Tourist Authority. The way it has a List feature, a Map feature and you can search, see what's nearby etc - all very good features and relevant to our project. 

2. 

Authors well known for books about London

- to find these I asked family and friends, used Wikipedia, used blogs and articles about the 'Best London Novels.

- We needed at least ten useable examples to use in creating the user profiles and scenarios - in order to make the app seem concrete. These examples will show user tastes, locations and pain/motivation points. 

We chose to split into three sub-groups within the group in order to focus on all of the parts of the assignment. 

1. User Specifications and Conceptual models:  ZOE and LOTTIE (Zoe also as Project Manager)

2. Design specifications and Interface diagrams: EMI, ELIZABETH and NICOLE

3. Business Model section: MAX and LINGYI 

Our app 'WanderLost' will allow users to explore the literary history of the greatest city in the world, London. 

Features: 

- interactive maps with locations from books, authors' lives and literary hotspots

- Out-of-print books will form the content database of locations. We will also include author information (in our BETA app). In future versions of the app we will reach more cities and include more - newer books. 

- The user will set preferences about what kind of literature they are interested in  and notifications and information will only appear under the chosen criteria.

In order to get to this idea wasn't too difficult, even if the process was long. On our way we encountered loads of questions we needed to ask ourselves, in fact at every meeting it seemed we thought of more questions and still had relatively few answers.

How will it be funded?

Will we be affiliated with a publisher?

Will it be affiliated with a discovery website - Bookish or Goodreads?

What is our USP?

Should it be affiliated with an EVENTS company/publication and feature literary events going on in the capital?

Are there similar apps on the market?

Who is our target market?

To what extent will there be user interaction in the app, if any?

Should there be incentives to unlock further information (game?)?

Initial ideas for our 2.2 project have gotten underway. We have decided to separate 2.1 and 2.2 from one another. We didnt want to propose an enhanced ebook, and as this was really the only option with our illustrated pocket books we created for 2.1, we chose to go in another direction.

Brainstorming:

initial ideas:

We discussed the idea of Audio books - an app that controls them, so that when you get on a train or bus, and you put your headphones in - the book starts - and stops - when you need it to. This had limitations in that you might not want to listen everytime you got on public transport. It would also be unsuitable for less mobile people, and blind people as their hearing would be necessary for transport. 

We thought it could be connected to TFL Oyster, so that it would judge how long your journey was and stop the book at an appropriate moment - this is an idea with potential as it encourages convenience. It could also tell you - interrupt your story - if there were tube announcements by the driver or the station manager - so that you don't miss out on these whilst plugged in. This feature could also be disabled if undesired.

A further idea linked to this is that we could link our app to Locations - and give the user information (of a literary nature) about their surroundings when they are travelling. This could be London based or elsewhere.