OUR START UP JOURNEY ‘’ IF I WERE IN YOUR SHOES ‘’.
In our start up, which is our blog called ‘’If I were in your shoes’’, that one member of our team aggeliki iwannou have mentionted in her latest post, we have gained insights from our users and we made our own observations during the function of our blog. We followed the model that OpenIDEO suggests, in order to conduct this process. In our blog, users have the ability to stay completely anonymous, so we made observations, about how many people felt free and how easily could they express their supressing feelings and exchange experiences and ideas with other unknown people , who might have same or similar problems and they could give them a realistic solution. In the categorie of our blog, which is called ‘’Social Forum’’, some users have felt secure to write their own problems and they took answers from other anonymous users that were willing to help them. So, we validated, that our ideas got the attention of some people and they might found it as a good one,as they dare to write about their personal problems and express their feelings.
The users, that reply, seems to have a sincere feeling to comfort the users that are in trouble. It seems, that the fact that they are unknown, encourrage people to share their feelings, because they didn’t have the fear to be judged by others or to be ashamed. Our vision, was to show to the world that no matter in which suburb of the world you might be, we are all humans, we are all have feelings and if we stay united we can provide help to each other! Users seem to trying to try out our new idea, but we should definitely raise the awareness more!
As we observed the blog, we found very essential, to promote our blog more and let more people to get to know our promissing tool, Thomi Galani has uploaded the pages that are refered to our site. We decided, that we should make our blog more trustworthy, so we thought that we can add more articles from scientific sites and encyclopedias, or even ask from experts as doctors and psychologists, to help us and write their own opinions,in order to give to our users better sources of solutions. We aimed to show to people that they could take advices for free or in a very low cost, if experts are involved in this process. That was a new item that we added to our start up, because from the observations that we made, we thought that it is a good option, in order to enhance the quality of the solutions that are provided and gain the respect and the trust of more users and highten our job. So, every user , unrelated to where he /she lives, or in what economical situation he/she might be, or how old he/she might be, will develope the insight, that world could be a better place, in which people are truly here for him/her and they WANT to help! All people, have been through lots of similar and hard situations but we can alltogether pass them and become optimistic again! That is the insight, that we are trying to offer to our users! And we aggeliki iwannou and Thomi Galani have learned, that there are simple ways to do that and see the brighter side of life. All you need to do is talk!
