Eurasia : Working with the User Experience Map

The following post is part of the #Eurasia project of the Ad Discovery Workshop of Panteion University in Greece.

Eurasia is a start-up project based on the Ad Discovery Workshop : an experimental peer-to-peer learning, hands-on workshop conducted by Assistant Professor Betty Tsakarestou of the Department of Communication Media and Culture, of Panteion University, Athens, Greece. Founded by 6 university students from 3 different countries and 2 continents, Eurasia works as an international journalistic and social platform that serves as a multicultural community that everyone from Europe and Asia can join, read articles from various perspectives, meet people from different backgrounds and write articles of their own to post on our site and social media pages. Our basic purpose is to create a better understanding of the travelling, technological social and cultural beliefs and differences between the countries of Eurasia.

Following the steps as provided by the OpenIdeo methodology, to form our team and materialize our project, which is a human designed thinking methodology, we created a user experience map, by which we visualized the experience a possible user would have by coming in touch with our project.
Firstly, Amanda Voulgari and I, who were responsible of the graphics, the content and materialisation of the user experience map, read the steps given by OpenIdeo and analyzed them. The first step was to create our own ideal persona, our ideal user. We chose to name him Harry, a name that occurred to us after we thought of the fictional character of Harry Potter which could become our user. Harry would be an Erasmus student, as we wanted a user who would love travelling and learning about different civilizations.

Having found our user and his personality traits, we continued on with the storytelling of our project by stating the problem in which Eurasia would eventually give an answer and a solution to. As the character of Harry was to be an Erasmus student, the problem that he came across was decided to be that he was moving to China and was in need of further information about the everyday life, culture and society of Asia, ideally from the perspective of its own habitants. The complication which he faced in order to receive such information originated from the fact that he could not find enough reliable and gratifying resources on the internet.

But how exactly did this user came across Eurasia and began exploring it to find an answer to his questions and problems? After conversing with his friends and peers and letting them know about his issue, they informed him about the existence of our site, which they had retrieved from their own friends or the activity of our social media. When he visits it, he discovers a variety of articles that respond exactly to his needs and concerns and achieves to get a solution to his problem, as he is able to read posts based on cultural, technological, social and travelling issues reported from different and varying perspectives of several residents of Asia.

This whole storytelling of the User Experience Map was based on the fact that we constantly kept in mind and thought of real and similar problems that occur to a user, or even an everyday university student like ourselves, in their constant interaction with the World Wide Web. Based on those facts and thoughts we brainstormed and summarized on what the final solutions that would be offered by our project could be. Taking all of the above into consideration, we created a viable persona, found an actual problem and its probable solution and in the end tested the appliance of our project in a real world experience.
The materials we used for making the user were drawing staff (pens, etc) and printed digital images from the website and the internet.

You can find more info about our startup on our official website: http://eurasiaco.wix.com/eurasia
Like us on #Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eurasiaco
Follow us on #Twitter: https://twitter.com/eurasiaco
TEAM: Amanda Voulgari, Daphne Diapouli, twnia nisotaki, Catherine Meng, Zuzana Hájková Ling Jin

With the help of Assistant Professor Betty Tsakarestou of the Department of Communication Media and Culture, of Panteion Univeristy, Athens, Greece.

© 2016 by an Ad Discovery Workshop of Panteion University