Casebeskrivelse:
Ingstrup Bogby wishes to attract newcomers and tourists by adopting a theme based around books. Ingstrup has already taken action by building wagons, filled with books for sale, placed around the town, which is being looked after by local volunteers. Residents are also called to put up quotes, words or sentences on or around their houses that have meaning for them.
This book city concept has a very limited budget and as a result wishes to consist primarily of volunteers.
Konceptvideo:
Designprocess:
Daily planning
As we began our work on the given case, we decided to utilize the Scrum method as a way to plan the work we had to do in the three weeks.
We set it up in our working area by putting up a Scrum board on a wall so everyone could see it. It was set up in three different categories: To-do, Doing and Done.
To-do was for the tasks we needed to get started on. The more important the task, the higher it was placed on the board.
Doing was for the tasks we were currently working on which made it easy for everyone to see what we all were working on daily.
Done was the section were we moved the tasks we had finished to. That made it simple to see what we had ready to go.
Every morning would begin with a Scrum meeting with every group member present. This meeting was used to get a status for how far along every task, currently being worked on, was, what every member were currently doing and to get a feeling for what needed to be added to the To-do list.
At the end of each day, the group would sit down again to talk about how their assigned tasks were coming along, if they needed more time to do them and if they were going to work on them at home.
This would repeat every day during the workshop.
Week 37
We had our first meeting with the Ingstrup Bogby clients and from that it was decided that the targeted group was to be families and people who are very interested in books.
Brainstorming
We decided to kick-start both the group and the assignment with a brainstorm on the word BOOK. We all had feelings, stories, images and thoughts about books, some very similar and some very different.
In order to clear our heads we also had to make a brainstorm on what books are NOT. i.e. Books and swimming don’t go well together!
After writing, laughing, talking, explaining and discussing the various words, we decided on a few words that would form a smaller group of what we felt were important for the word “book”. The final words for inspiration were (in random order): Fun, Culture, Entertainment, Book-club, Moods, Story, Make you dream, Individual experience, Imagination, Immersion, Travel, Atmosphere, Experiences, Read, History and Limitless.
We talked about the fact that most of these words all describe the contents of books. But when we visiualise our future book-town it is mainly the more aesthetic, visible part of the book that we see. Maybe we face a problem in trying to grasp what we feel is the real essence of books in something visible?
Research Trip to Ingstrup
On our first visit to Ingstrup Bogby the initial impression of the town was not that of a very special town. Their bogby sign, placed by the entrance to the town, was quite hard to see and the main street did not look very inviting.
However, there were some nice looking houses with gardens and green areas in the areas that lead away from the main street.
One of the clients explained about the town and the different initiatives from volunteers. An old lady had a small shack by her house, where visitors could stay for a while and read books, write poems or whatever came to their minds and put it, in written form, in a basket inside the shack.
After our tour of the town, we walked around town and interviewed random residents. What we learned from that was that their general idea of Ingstrup as a book city was, that it sounded like an interesting and fun idea. The problem was that they felt, as local residents, they had received no further information about what was going on about the book city concept and how they might help it along.
Stakeholder map
Since we, during our analysis, have found that there probably are many different stakeholders in the project, we decided to draw up a stakeholders map to be able to identify how active and how important/powerful the various participants were. We also felt that perhaps some communication with important stakeholders got lost somewhere along the way, and a map perhaps could help us identify both pains and possibilities.
We decided on using a matrix with an active <-> passive line in one direction and a most <-> least important on the other direction.
In the process, it soon became clear that the dairy and the only other shop in town were quite important. During our interviews we found that they both (shop more than dairy) felt a little left out of the information-loop, and that can be dangerous, since they are the 2 only places for a visitor in the town to go to seek information.
We also found that one category for the inhabitants in Ingstrup was not enough. We had to divide them into several groups:
– the board members of Ingstrup Bogby: a handful of committed and hardworking people, keen on getting Ingstrup back on the map.
– the volunteers that had book wagons to attend to: 10 people, with time and energy to look after the wagon.
– the “Quoters”: the almost 50 households, that up till now have set up signs with quotes on their houses. We think of this as a clear indication of positive interest in the project.
– people living on the main street: if the plan is to involve the main street in the project, and perhaps even change the city center, it is of utmost importance that this group has a positive feeling about the project. Unfortunately, we only saw very few “Quoters” on the main street.
We also talked about the few people that could create problems, like a house owner wanting to sell her currently empty house/shop right in the city centre. She unfortunately was not interested in renting her shop to anyone, because she felt that it was impossible to run a shop and as long as the Ingstrup Bogby has no means of importance, buying the house seems very unlikely.
Playing in sandboxes
Trying to figure out the problems and issues in our case, we spent some time playing in sandboxes at Nordkraft! We each picked several items from the displays, and without talking, we placed them in “Ingstrup Sandcity”. After everything was placed in the sandbox, arranged and then rearranged, we had a long talk about what we saw, and how it all could be interpreted. Soon it became quite clear that we had many individuals in our town, – but they were each going about their own business, not really bothering about what the other guys were doing. A lot of confusion seemed to be going on, and in the middle of it all we had a steam train about to collide with a car, – and a little duck in between. We had some discussions as to who or what the duck and the steam train was supposed to be, and what would happen if we turned the steam train around, so it could drive beside or in front of the car instead.
The sand box showed us that we think that Ingstrup has potential, there is a lot going on, but the individual forces has to be combined in order to take things to the next level, and communication has to be better.
Playing in sandboxes may seem silly, but the group quickly came to what we felt were the core of the problem, – and think that it (besides of being fun) actually helped the process moving fast forward.
Week 38
Meeting with the client 1
Our first feedback meeting with the client as a group, we prepared three concepts based on what we had learned during our research trip and the following days of analysing the data. The concepts were made to help the client understand what ideas we were cooking up after experiencing the town first hand for the first time.
The three concepts
How do we make the books come alive, and how do we inspire people to take part in the experience?
What we have to create in this project is a feeling of wanting to be part of creating and building Bogbyen Ingstrup. This could both be residents in Ingstrup and from areas around Ingstrup, but also visitors/tourists coming to Ingstrup. But in order to do that we have to partly create or visualize what Ingstrup is going to look like and feel like as a book-town in the future.
Concept 1 – Mobilization
The first concept revolved around the idea of mobilizing the towns own community in order to gather a greater workforce for the book city. To do that, they would need to utilize great communication, and spread the word, to the entire town and that was make the people of Ingstrup each take ownership of the book city concept in their own unique ways.
Concept 2 – Beautification
We felt that the town needed to gather inspiration, maybe from other book cities and artists, to make the town more welcome and announce the book theme as soon as visitors entered the town. They could paint some of the houses with colours and book covers, and the town needed to be able to maintain this, which would relate to Concept 1 as a great workforce would be needed.
Concept 3 – Expansion
We believe that, over time, the town would need to expand on the concept of a book city in order to really make an impact. They could make arrangements with other book cities, around the world, and make contact with different authors, maybe even arrange for book signings and release events.
The client liked the idea of mobilizing the locals in order to help with the beautification of the town. For our next meeting they would like to see examples of how they could make the town more welcoming and how to expand on the concept within the town.
Week 39
Meeting with the client 2
For our second meeting we presented the clients with how we saw the current custom journey was playing out when visitors came to the town. As requested, we presented them with a visualization, by video sketches, of how the customer journey could instead unfold if the town was made more welcoming by introducing different ideas.
Customer journey
A potential visitor may, at this time, find out about the town by either getting a tip from a friend, maybe on a social network, in which case they can find out where to go to get there by maps or GPS, or by passing the town by accident.
If they pass by accident, two scenarios can occur. Either they pass the town completely or they spot the bogby sign, placed by the entrance to the town, and decide to visit the town.
Once they enter the town they will try to locate a parking lot, if they have a car, which at this point in time will not be a problem, as there are plenty of parking spaces available for the limited number of visitors currently visiting the town.
In the town the first thing they may decide to do is either visit the dairy, the book wagon outside the dairy, or the Aspects of Life shop at the opposite side of the road.
We found that none of the shopkeepers were able to tell us much about the whole book city concept, and at this point the visitor would rather just leave and continue out on the main road again.
Videoskitser:
Video sketches
We presented the client with two different video sketches. Both of which showed examples of how the city could expand with ways to attract visitors and make them stay.
Concept Video Sketch 1:
This is the first video sketch we did to visualize how we saw Ingstrup Bogby could expand and benefit from putting up a café, dedicated to books, in the citys main street and how that could move visitors to get curious about the town.
Concept Video Sketch 2:
This second video sketch visualizes how Ingstrup Bogby could expand by having special book tours around the town with different genre themes depending on the route the visitor chooses.
Behind the scenes – Crunch days
Alessandra Maragna – Natural and Cultural Heritage Management (NCHM – UCN)
Lars Kiesbye Bendixen – Interaktive Digitale Medier – (IndiMedia – AAU))
Lotte Engelbrecht Christensen – Natural and Cultural Heritage Management (NCHM – UCN))
Malene Grønborg Christensen – Industriel Design (A&D – AAU))
Thomas Larsen Jensen – Interaktive Digitale Medier (IndiMedia – AAU))