Group 9 – Crackers

This group worked with OpdagDanmark, which is an app/website that shows a map over different places people might see and visit in Denmark. They also do top 10 lists over places, for example top 10 bakeries in Denmark.

Group members

• Henriette Mejer Meerson
• Jonas Blendstrup Rasmussen
• Mathias Aleksander Heide
• Neesha Narayanan
• Stephanie Kjellerup Dyrby

Concept video

Here you’ll find the final concept video that the group produced. The video shows a tourist arriving in Denmark, discovering the app, and then creating an account which he personalises to his interests. He uses the app to find a place to visit (Aalborg Zoo) by getting inspiration from other users recommendations. He also finds a place to eat lunch based on certain search criteria that he enters, as well as his interests that he entered when making his account.

The Design Process

1st Deliverable: Plan for Imperial Work

• We started by doing a brainstorm over stakeholders of the system
  • We divided the stakeholders into two groups, personal and business
  • We then found common characteristics of the two groups
  • The characteristics were used to form a mutual understanding among the team members so that all members had the same understanding of the two groups involvement with, and relation to, the system
    
    
• Based on this we choose a group that we would focus on for the design sprint
  • We decided on younger people (18-30)
  • We decided on this group based on statements from the case partner from the meeting the day before, as well as the apparent availability and ease of access to the user group
  • The case partner had described how he was very interested in improving the user experience of the app
  • He had also said that he quit his previous travel-related job because that workplace catered more to the businesses rather than focusing on the users and their needs
  • Therefore it was obvious to the team that the case partner favoured user experience over business model and revenue
  • Furthermore, the case partner had mentioned how he would like to implement a subscription-based payment model
  • The subscription would give subscribers discounts to travel-related places
  • Based on our own experience and knowledge of the user group, we found that such a model would be especially relevant for the younger user segment
  • Finally, the decision was also affected by the team’s own interest, and our thoughts of how we believed we could best help the case partner achieve his goals with the system
    
    
• After deciding on a primary stakeholder group to focus on, we had to figure out how to gather data about them, and what other data might be needed for the task at hand 
  • For researching the users, we decided that qualitative data would be more beneficial than quantitative data since we found (based on experience) that systems design and development is a quite subjective process
  • To gather the qualitative data we decided to go with semi-structured interviews since this would allow the group to have predefined questions regarding the topic of discussion, but also leave the interviews open so that the interviewees could add anything that the team might not have thought or asked about
  • To supplement the data gathered from interviews, the team planned a sort of analysis of an existing system (Google Trips), which supposedly fulfilled all goals of the case systems and more to it
  • The sort of analysis of Google Trips would be conducted using the 5 elements of user experience as described by Jesse James Garrett.
  • The OpdagDanmark app would also be looked at using the 5 elements so that the two systems could be compared, and the team could identify possible features that could help OpdagDanmark differentiate itself from its competitors (such as Google Trips)
  • The team also prepared an interview for businesses, simply because the team might need data about the business perspective, even if this is not something that the group would focus on
  • This happened because the system itself tries to connect users with businesses, so obviously, the businesses would play at least some part in using the system and the entire process surrounding the system

2nd Deliverable: Affinity diagram

• In total the team had conducted 15 interviews, and while the interviews hadn’t been transcribed (due to time constraints) notes had been written for every interview
  • This approach shouldn’t differ too much from other approaches to affinity diagrams, and the result would, more or less, be the same as other approaches. However, by choosing a specific approach the team made sure that every member had the same understanding of what had to be done and how to do it
  • There are a lot of ways to make affinity diagrams, but the team decided to base their approach on the book Contextual Design Evolved (2014) by Holtzblatt K. & Beyer H. To analyze the data we had gathered, we decided to make an affinity diagram
  • The affinity diagram was made in Mural.co, which allows all members of the team to edit and see the same document at the same time
  • While making the affinity diagram the team had a voice call meeting on Microsoft Teams, so communication wasn’t an issue
  • The theory behind affinity diagrams stresses that they should be made in a physical room with printed paper/post-it notes, however considering covid-19 and the advice from lecturers, the group found Mural + Teams to be a decent alternative without too many drawbacks

• When all affinity notes had been made in Mural, the team divided the notes into five equal groups, where each team member was given a group
  • After having split the interview notes into affinity notes, the team ended up with 192 affinity notes that could be used to make the diagram
  • When all notes had been grouped under blue labels, the team went through each blue label grouping
  • The team members then took turns reading aloud one of their notes, and the whole team would then discuss the note and their interpretation of it, and if it fits a blue label that had already been created then they would place it under that, otherwise, a new blue label would be created
  • There were a few cases where the blue label groupings ended at 8 or 9 affinity notes, and could not be split into other groupings
  • The team kept doing this process until each member had read aloud three or four notes, after which there were plenty of categories and repetition. The group then went ahead and moved their own notes to the categories, or made new categories if necessary
  • According to the theory, green labels should have been added as a layer above the pink labels, however, given that the team had less than the 500-1000 affinity notes that the theory recommends, the team decided to skip this step and stop at the pink label groupings

Affinity Diagram (link)

 

 

3rd Deliverable: Core Design Resume

• In order to create innovation tracks (core-design) the team started the day by going through all their gathered data, as well as their affinity diagram and systems analysis from the previous days
  • The team split into two groups, where one group would highlight key findings from the affinity diagram and interviews, and the other group would highlight key findings from the systems analysis of OpdagDanmark and Google Trips
    
  • Some of the most noteworthy key findings from the affinity diagram were the following:
    • People prefer personalized content based on their liking, interest and personality
    • They prefer authentic experiences and information
    • The geographical location of the user determines if they would use the app 
    • People are sticking to a familiar way of gathering information 
    • Duration and how often one travels influences whether people would use the app
    • How one travels in general influences if people would be interested in paying for the service
    • Getting discounts would make some people visit new places, esp. People who like to save as much as possible during travelling. 
      
      
  • Some of the most noteworthy key findings from the systems analysis were the following:
    • OpdagDanmark could differentiate from Google Tips by specializing in information about Denmark and the experiences within.
    • OpdagDanmark could also differentiate from Google by creating a form of personalization that differentiates from Google’s and that their specific user base (travellers in DK) might appreciate more.
    • In terms of usability, OpdagDanmark lacks quite behind Google Trips, the aesthetic on the website does have coherence however it lacks finetuning and sense of detail which could increase the usability. 
  • Of course, we found other things too, however, these ones were the most important one for the process of creating the innovation tracks.
  • The team made four different innovation tracks, each with a specific focus
  • Each of the innovation tracks is described below.
    
    
• Innovation track #1: User experience
  • This track had a focus on the user experience of the app/website
  • The reasoning behind the track comes from the fact that multiple interviewees expressed that they preferred “nice” apps and one even mentioned that they choose the apps and systems they use based on their opinion of their interfaces.
  • For quality criteria this innovation track had a primary quality called usability, a secondary quality called personalisation, a tertiary quality called informative, and lastly a quandary quality called aesthetically pleasing
  • Usability was deemed as the most important quality in this innovation track, because usability is tightly coupled with user experience, and it’s almost impossible to have a good user experience if the usability of the system is awful.
  • Personalisation was also deemed to be quite important to this track, considering that user experience is formed from the subjective opinion of each individual user, so the team thought that it would be important for the app to cater to each user’s specific needs
  • The app had to be informative so that users could actually get value out of using it.
  • Furthermore, an aesthetically pleasing interface design can help increase the user experience quite a lot.
    
    
• Innovation track #2: Information focus
  • This track had a focus on the being centred around the information the app conveys because this is the primary content of the system, and therefore incredibly important to the app’s success
  • For quality criteria this innovation track had a primary quality called informative, a secondary quality called trustworthily, a tertiary quality called dissemination, and lastly a quandary quality called convenience
  • The primary quality was deemed to be the quality of the app being informative, and the team agreed that this would cover the information being of high quality as well.
  • For users to trust and find the information valid, the app would have to establish a trustworthy appearance and the information itself would have to be presented in a trustworthy way, potentially with sources or the like
  • The dissemination of the information would be important for this innovation track, considering the large amount of information that the app had to convey, it would be important that the app translates the information into a language that the users understood.
  • Finally, quality of convenience was determined to be important for this track, considering that users shouldn’t have a hard time getting to the information they need
    
    
• Innovation track #3: Business 
  • This track had a focus on being centred around the business aspect of having an app and making money from it: profit from the users and charge for app features.
  • The primary quality in this track was the symbiotic relationship between all of the stakeholders and how they benefit from each other. 
  • We established the importance of the app being engaging since this is what attracts the users and makes them keep wanting to use the app. 
  • Furthermore, the payment for using the app needs to be cost-efficient. The user needs to acknowledge that the app is worth what it provides. 
  • Lastly, the business model needs to be transparent for the customers so they are aware of how the business is conducted and feel secure in investing in it. 
    
    
• Innovation track #4: Community
  • The case partner had at the first meeting expressed concern for users deleting the app after they had finished their travels, and therefore wanted a way to make the users keep the app and engage with it outside of their travels
  • For this reason, the group make the innovation track called community, where the idea was to make the app function as a sort of social network
  • For quality criteria this innovation track had a primary quality called social, a secondary quality called engaging, a tertiary quality called personalisation, and lastly a quandary quality called usability
  • Since this innovation track has a focus on creating a community amongst its users, the most important quality was it being social and encouraging users to engage with other users and form connections
  • A natural continuation of the primary quality was the secondary quality that stated the app had to be engaging for the users, this reasoning behind this was the same as for the primary quality, although the two qualities obviously cater to two different perspectives on the matter
  • Personalisation was determined to be important to this track as well, considering that a high degree of personalisation would lead to a higher degree of engagement
  • Lastly, the quandary quality was usability, since a system with a large number of users would have to be usable by a lot of different types of users with different technical skills
    
    
• The presentation and negotiation with the case partner
  • The team had a meeting with the case partner and presented all the information that has been described above, with a focus on each innovation track
  • Through a nice discussion the case partner and the team decided that they should focus on the innovation track regarding user experience, but if possible also consider the business side of things
  • This conclusion came to be because of the team members particular skills and interests, as well as the data from the interviews and systems analysis, which clearly pointed towards user experience being important for such a system as this case

4th Deliverable: ‘How Might We’ – Questions and Ideation Framework

• We discussed our experience with the negotiation with our case partner from the meeting we had previous Friday, followed by a conversation on our chosen innovation track(s) which we developed from our quality criteria.
  
• As this week is based on entering the solution phase, we started by transforming the quality criteria that the group had previously agreed upon, with our case partner, into ‘how might we’ questions.
  • For this process, each team member made 3 or more ‘how might we’ questions.
  • After each team member had finished we went through every question and discussed and evaluated them in regards to the quality criteria as well as our previous meeting with the case partner.
  • Through this process, the team ended up deciding to go with the following question: How might we give more relevant and personalized suggestions to users so that they use OpdagDanmark more frequently and pay for the premium service?

• The team then had to create ideas from the chosen ‘how might we’ question, where the team came up with eight different ideas and angles for the question
  • The ideas were made through discussion and by looking through the previously collected data.
  • The eight ideas were:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Interacting with the app (reviewing places, inviting friends to use the app etc.) will result in extra deals.
            2. Instagram-like page with a bunch of user suggested places and pictures that other people might find inspiration from and “like”
            3. The app will push deals based on the user’s location
            4. Plan trips together and have chats/groups to share travel-related stuff (articles, photos or similar they find online)
            5. Personalised profile where users choose categories based on their own interests. The app will use this info to push deals and suggestions to individual users based on this info. – Digital surveys and questionnaires
            6. Users can connect with each other and get suggestions from friends and family through the app.
            7. Different types of user categories – pay different fees for using the premium features in the app
            8. “Memories” where it sends users notifications about previous trips

• • Each of these ideas was evaluated and refined in regards to the main ‘how might we’ question and five ideas were chosen as the most relevant.
  • The five chosen ideas were 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7
    
    
• The five chosen ideas were then expanded upon, by adding another 8 sub-ideas to the main idea.
  • We won’t go through each sub-idea, but generally, these ideas simply expanded upon the main idea, in such a way where it was different from the main idea, but belonged to the theme of the idea.
  • As an example, let’s consider the chosen idea 2, about an Instagram-like page.
  • The main idea behind the Instagram-like page was to create a social media kind of feature that could help make people more likely to use the app outside their travels.
  • One sub-idea for this one was to implement a tag-like system, where people could add tags to their pictures/posts so that a strong filtering system could be added, thereby allowing more clear and user-friendly navigation, while also being recognizable.
  • Another sub-idea was to have some posts be marked as post of the day, or picture of the day so that the posts with the most likes or quality would be highlighted.
  • Of course, when talking about social media and user-generated content, it should also be considered that people might take advantage of these features, so another sub-idea was to have a report system for inappropriate content.
    
    
• When all five ideas had been expanded upon, the team went ahead and discussed each of them, again this discussion was based upon collected data and the meeting with the case partner. 
  • The discussion was meant to help the team narrow down the ideas to only three, so that their prototype and further work wouldn’t be too complicated and so that it would be possible to come up with some good designs that could be more in-depth, compared to if the team had to work with a broader set of features.
  • The three chosen ideas were the idea about the Instagram-like page, the idea about pushing deals based on location data, and the idea about having personalised and specific user profiles that could be used to push relevant and personal suggestions and content to each individual user.

Sketches of the concept

Here are our three initial video sketches, along with short  concept descriptions.

5th Deliverable: 3-5 visualised concepts 

Video 1: Inspiration from other users

• • The user is out travelling and is looking for a place to get some food
  • The user decides to use the OpdagDanmark app to look at user recommendations 
  • The user opens the app
  • The app shows a list of places in the area 
  • The user clicks on one recommendation, which leads to a page, where there is a user recommendation, as well as a star-based rating system and a scenic picture of the location posted by the reviewer.
  • The user reads the recommendation and decides to go to the recommended place, which is a restaurant.

Video 2: Personalized profile

The second video sketch is focused on the aspect of personalization. Our approach was centered on the key features that can be potentially used to make the app more personalized to the user preference with easy to use, quick and straightforward interface. It is meant to convey the ease through which a user can create his/her profile with different categories which they can define for themselves while searching for recommendations for  things to do through the app. The app then recommends and prompts suggestions based on the user’s background and preferences. 

Video 3: Location based suggestions

• • Two friends are visiting a new city
  • They do not know where to go and what to experience, since they have never been here before
  • The one friend suggest that they use the app OpdagDanmark to get suggestions on what to do in this area
  • They open the app where they are met by a map that shows you where and what to experience in their area
  • They choose a category and specific attraction
  • They decide on a place to go and are given a route to their destination