Visiting Cards
A Happy Hour Idea
Happy Hour Ideas is a side project, where we (Alex and Christian) work on one idea a month and use Medium as a platform to share our explorations. We came across this idea a few weeks ago at happy hour where we realized we kept finding ourselves talking a lot about ideas, but we really only ever talk about them. Through this conversation we decided to ground our ideas, learn more, and give them a place to live.
More on the process of tackling each idea- check it out!
Our First Idea: Visiting Cards
Visiting Cards helps plan visits. It’s a deck of cards, each with something you can do during your visit- see the image below and keep it in mind during the rest of the read:
The Visiting Cards, more specifically, is a tool that helps conversations about planning a trip, like a weekend trip when visiting a friend that lives in a city you’ve never been to.
Simply enough, laying all the cards out allows everyone in the group to discuss the best use of their time together.
Simply enough, laying all the cards out allows everyone in the group to discuss the best use of their time together. This card activity kick starts conversations around needs, desires and logistics, helping to maximize time together, and time in a new place.
How Visiting Cards Comes Alive
The idea started when Christian’s parents visited him in Austin, Texas. In the past, he had planned weekend visits for his friends. But knowing his parents’ visit would be different from entertaining other 20 year olds, the idea of planning an agenda together with his parents seemed important. Not like a strict uptight agenda but more like a “there’s-so-many- good-things-in-Austin-and-I-don’t-want-to-forget-anything” kind of agenda. So Christian made a list of his 30 favorite things to do in Austin and put them each on their own card. When his parents got to Austin, they used the cards to help plan what they would try to do while they were there, from Friday through Sunday.
He and his parents had a few specific things already planned before they got there- to have lunch together Friday and then stop by his office after. Saturday they were going to get groceries and make dinner at Christian’s house with his roommates. And Sunday they would go to go to Mass in the morning before their flight that afternoon. Knowing they had those few specific activities already planned, they pulled those cards out and started with them as a base to build from.
With that base, they started building out the rest of the weekend- starting with Friday. They knew they were going to hang out at their hotel until they met Christian for lunch. Then they would see his office. Understanding they would need to pick a spot to have dinner and maybe get a drink before and after, they could look for food and bar cards that were amongst the rest of the cards laid out. Of those food and bar cards, they’d look for ones that were on the east side.
And the same idea for Saturday and Sunday, you get the idea. And the cards come in handy when plans need to change. If it rains or a place is closed for a private event- you pull out the cards and find something else to do nearby or change locations, it’s flexible!
Visiting Cards acts as a tangible tool to help the group have a better conversation about what to do. Think about how a paper map is a tangible tool that people use to talk about directions. The map is something that when you point at a road you could take to get from A to B, everyone know exactly where you’ll start, the path the road takes and, where you’ll stop. Cards do the same, helping to turn your attention to the group, rather than Yelp or Google Maps that keep your head in your phone. Visiting Cards is just a bit more playful and interactive.
Making Visiting Cards Real
So, we have this “Visiting Cards” Idea. Now, how can we productize it? We’ve thought of a few ideas:
Available Online — Starting with a way we could sell Visiting Cards and keep the idea close to the original- we could sell the Visiting Cards online. Starting small, we’d offer 2 different card decks, one for your “party friends” and one for your “tourist friends”, for 5 different cities. Just like it sounds, the kind of bars, food options, coffee shops and activities that’d be included in each Card deck would be relevant to the two different Card themes. The Cards could be marketed to hosts that love to entertain, as a fun way to plan the weekend! Understanding there wouldn’t be a specific host in this scenario, we would have to play the part! Off to 5 new cities we go!
Airbnb Promotion — The promotion would be something like giving Visiting Cards to the 5 most popular hosts, within a specific price range, in 10 different cities for Fall 2018. Assuming Airbnb has a pretty good understanding of the demographic who’s renting within the specified price range, the activities included in the Cards for those specific hosts would cater to Fall activities that the demographic’s interested in. The cards could be a great, fun tool for the visitors to help plan what they’d do during their stay. In this promotion based scenario, we envision Airbnb buying the idea from us, or paying to facilitate this promotion. Airbnb?
Collect-As-You-Go — A gamification twist to Visiting Cards could add a layer of fun- something like a treasure hunt. Imagine having an amazing brunch in Nashville, TN at Dozen Bakery that left you asking, “what else can I see in Nashville that’s like this?” This twist assumes some degree of critical mass and functions as an on-the-go exchange with the people you encounter. So from Dozen Bakery, you could ask your server for more cards, aka more suggestions. As you make your way around town, you collect cards where you can. Cards could provide an incentive like coupons to keep you moving.
On The Grid Collaboration — Thinking about how we could expand the Visiting Cards idea — we’d love to do something similar to how On The Grid uses City Ambassadors to create their city guides. They have teamed up with hundreds of creative companies and designers from around the world to curate the most exceptional places in each neighborhood. We could use the same “City Ambassador” approach they do or even better, collaborate with them and pair Visiting Cards with some of their city guides! They believe that traveling is a learning experience and we couldn’t agree more!
Where the Idea is Now
We feel great to have shared our first “happy hour idea!” Starting with a conversation, a bit of prototyping and testing, getting feedback from friends/family and finally, giving our idea a place to live on Medium.
“The Cards of Austin made it really easy to map out our visit and prioritize where we would eat and drink and the sights we’d see — what a clever idea!”
Christian’s parents enjoyed using them- they said, “The Cards of Austin made it really easy to map out our visit and prioritize where we would eat and drink and the sights we’d see — what a clever idea!” However, as we all know, parent feedback is always slightly biased and we’ll continue testing Visiting Cards with others but we’d also love to hear what you think! Tell us your thoughts about the Visiting Cards idea in general or more specifically, how you think the idea could be productized. And of course, if you’re ever in town, we’d love to run through our Visiting Cards with you!
Shoot us an email: alex.lauri@gmail.com or christianmulligan@gmail.com
Thanks to Ian Jaye, Mike Zausmer, Phil Brown, Josh Damesworth, Kristin Kaiser, Aric Cheston, Amy Schweiss, and Drew Stock for giving us feedback and to Mike & Barb Mulligan for testing it!
