VisitAalborg – Newsletter

  Casebeskrivelse: 

Visit Aalborg has a concept called “Vi Elsker Weekend”. This concept is mainly a newsletter, send out on Thursday so the people who has subscribed to it. From 2013 till today the newsletter has grown from 100 to 1500 subscribers. A number Visit Aalborg would like go grow even more.

Our case is to find out how the content form the newsletter can reach even more people in Aalborg and the near by areas.

Morten Poulsen – Experience design 7th semester, AAU
Kenneth Kjær – Indi Media 7th semester, AAU
Rikke Hald Indi Media 7th semester, AAU
Line Østerbye – Industrial design 5th semester, AAU
Jovitas Liberis – Natural and cultural heritage management 5th semester, UCN
Kristine Christensen – Natural and cultural heritage management 3rd semester, UCN

Konceptvideo:

The final concept

The core of our design is “if I’m not a part of this I’m missing out on something”. We all the way through the design process we have had this in mind.
The final concept is The Event Tree. The Tree is divided up in categories by different colors. There is an information sign to explain the user about the tree and the different colors. There is going to be hearts on the tree formed like the heard Logo Visit Aalborg is using. They are stuck on the tree with metal wire, so they can’t be taken off. The heard can be open and different content can be placed from time to time.
The heard is going to be put up 1 a month. The first Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The final film

The final film is filmed in two different ways. Every part of the film there the tree is involved we have used green screen. This is the best way to show a person interact with the tree. The part where Line and Morten is watching the comedy show is also made in the green screen room. The rest of the film is filmed at AAU’s department in Rendsburggade. The film is going to show how we think the concept could work in the best way for Visit Aalborg. In this film we have put quiet a lot of focus on the viral marketing, because we think that’s one of the best ways for Visit Aalborg go spread the word about the Event Tree.

Designprocess:

Observations Video

We have interviewed different people in Aalborg about VisitAalborg and the concept “Vi Elsker Weekend”.

The purpose of the interview was to get an overview of the assignment and to get other peoples opinion when it comes to searching for information about what happens in the weekend. Most of the people we interviewed was students. From the interviews we found out that non of the people we interviewed knew about “Vi Elsker Weekend”. Many of them said that they would use an online device to find information about what happened in town during the weekend. They also said that they thought Thursday was too late to receive the information about the weekend.

Object Theater – Sandplay

Object theatre
We ended week 1 with doing a sandplay session. To sum up it was about thinking out of the box, and looking on different elements from another perspective. This was a very useful method in our work, because we were kind of stuck in the process. It made us all come to the same level of understanding out concept.

First of all we needed to find random artefacts and put them into our sandbox. Place them wherever we wanted to, and then try find some symbols in our way of placing the artefacts.
For instance, some animals were placed around a small DHL-truck, which by a normal point of view wouldn’t mean anything. But by visualization our case, we ended up saying that the way visit Aalborg were branding “Vi elsker weekend” maybe isn’t the right way, because the current newsletter maybe get stuck in its way reaching people. The try to reach out to a very large target group, and the information just didn’t reach anyone because it is too wide.

So by doing this sandplay session we kind of changed our mind-set, and began thinking more out of the box. We also realised we needed to define a target group for our future concept.

By summing up, we fund this method very useful, and in our future work we will definitely use it, when we need to visualize things, or if we get stuck in our work.
In our meeting at week 2 with Kim from Visit Aalborg, we also used this method to explain how we looked at the things, and to argument for out choice of target group.


Brainstorm

After the interviews and the Object Theater, we brainstormed to get an idea about where we wanted to go in this project. We all came with different ideas and wrote them down on a post its notes and placed them so everyone was able so see them.


Monday week 3 we had a meeting with Kim, from Visit Aalborg, and we showed him our 4 different videos. He liked The Event Tree idea best, and he even came up with some other solutions we could take in to consideration when we were going to brainstorm again.

We started brainstorming again Thursday morning, and came up with some words and elements we wanted to be a part of the final concept. After decided on them, we divided up in groups and made different storyboards. We decided on 2 of the ideas and tried to combine them into a final storyboard.

Videoskitser:

Video Sketch 1 – Reward Game

What is the design problem depicted?

We want to make people in Aalborg more aware and participate in VisitAalborgs events. From our previous data collecting and surveys, we know that this is a problem.

This design has the potential to solve the problem because it includes gamification and rewards the user if he/she participates in several events.

It is also a nice way for VisitAalborg to brand there events. More participation equals more money / advertisement.

What is the narrative or message in the sketch?

We want the customers to keep using our concept. This is the basic idea, if we get people to know about the concept, then we have to do something that makes them more likely to keep it. The solution could be a reward program as we have depicted in this video sketch.

The most important in this sketch, is the idea about giving the customers something back, which makes them keep using the concept in the future.

Which techniques did your apply?

We have used the green screen technology for creating our video sketch. This was the most useful way to create a video, because we use several clipart’s.

Video Sketch 2 – The Event Tree

What is the design problem depicted?

We want to make people in Aalborg more aware and participate in VisitAalborgs events. From our previous data collecting and surveys, we know that this is a problem.

This design has the potential to solve the problem because it includes gamification and rewards the user if he/she participates in several events.

It is also a nice way for VisitAalborg to brand there events. More participation equals more money / advertisement.

What is the narrative or message in the sketch?

This event tree is going to be a new fun way for the habitants in Aalborg to find out what happens in town. It is a tree that Visit Aalborg can put up when they want. The tree has different forms of events categorized by genre. There is an information sign where there will be information about the different genres. And the leaf from the tree can be taken down. There will be a QR code on the leaf, so it’s possible to scan the leaf and safe the information there is on it.

Which techniques did your apply?

In this sketch we used effects we designed to create the easiest way to show the concept on. The drawings were superimposed on a background of a flow, and there was the voice over.

Video Sketch 3 – Facebook

What is the design problem depicted?

We want to make people in Aalborg more aware and participate in VisitAalborgs events. From our previous data collecting and surveys, we know that this is a problem.

This design has the potential to solve the problem because it includes gamification and rewards the user if he/she participates in several events.

It is also a nice way for VisitAalborg to brand there events. More participation equals more money / advertisement.

What is the narrative or message in the sketch?

When people need something to do, they go to Facebook and visit the page ”Det sker iAalborg”, which is controlled by Visit Aalborg. At the page there is a calendar-app, where you can see everything that is going on in Aalborg.
The point is that several event organizations have access to the calendar, and are able to put events into the calendar. This means Visit Aalborg will not have an enormous workload.

Which techniques did your apply?

The video is made as a stop motion video. This method was the best to illustrate our idea, without using too much time on it. This was a quick and dirty way to get the job done.


Video Sketch 4 – Roads in the city

What is the design problem depicted?

We want to make people in Aalborg more aware and participate in VisitAalborgs events. From our previous data collecting and surveys, we know that this is a problem.

This design has the potential to solve the problem because it includes gamification and rewards the user if he/she participates in several events.

It is also a nice way for VisitAalborg to brand there events. More participation equals more money / advertisement.

What is the narrative or message in the sketch?

It is important that the user knows the path to an event and the event details. This idea is based on a foundation of usability, functionality and giving the user the best overview of VisitAalborgs events.

Which techniques did your apply?

We think that this was the most effective way to create this video, because we use several elements we had already used before.