Post-Looks-Like-Feels-Like
Following my “looks like feels like” presentation yesterday, which is the penultimate presentation of our thesis prototype (It’s almost over!), I walked away with both relief and worry. First the relief: the deck itself was captivating according to many people in the room, the narrative I struck from the get-go is powerful and strikes to the civics illiteracy problem we have in America and how a digital solution that I create will help incrementally alleviate it.
As for the product itself, POLLY, there are still some unresolved issues. One of them is the rewards structure. Our guest critic, our former Entrepreneurial Design professor and fountain of wisdom, Gary Chou questioned the feasibility of the prospect of companies and corporations signing on to this app and donating money to specific issues based on the rewards. To sum it up, POLLY in its current state works as follows:
The user answers quizzes and learns facts, all the while earning points for each action. For instance, let’s say you answer a quiz question worth 2 pts correctly. You will get 2 pts. Get it wrong and get 0. Fast forward to a ‘Quick Fact’ card, which will summarize in digestible size content the facts surrounding the previously completed quiz.. You get say 5pts for reading this.
As you accumulate points, you get closer to 100, at which point the 100 converts to a gold coin which is worth $1 in real money that can be donated to a charity sponsored by a big corporation. Got it? Cool. Confused? Not cool.
“Why would these companies get on your platform to do this?”
(Crap, I knew you’d ask that.)
Well….in this day and age, corporations need to demonstrate a genuine belief in ‘CSR’ which is Corporate Social Responsibility. My target demographic (millennials) prefers to align with companies that aim to benefit society and humanity rather than strictly capitalize from it and ultimately harm it. Following the 2016 elections there was an unprecedented effort by large corporations to speak up for freedom, democracy and encouragement of their employees to vote.
Companies, who already have tax incentive to donate to charities, may want to allocate some of their funds to POLLY with the message we are sending of NO CIVICS NO CIVILIZATION. Users who see these brands pop up on their feed as donors will develop a positive affinity to these companies while also learning how to be a better citizen. I believe this could be a driving factor in return engagement. If you see your network of friends is doing good, you will naturally be encouraged to keep up or do better. I was thinking of my rewards structure as intrinsically meaningful. But it’s very pie-in-the-sky thinking. I can see anyone who may feel this idea is idealistic and difficult to corroborate. Outside of being able to have a meeting with the CEO of Lyft or Patagonia to present this idea and seeing if they would be onboard, I also am uncertain if this idea works or not.
“Kill your darlings.”
At the end of the day, each component of my project needs to be believable and not just wishful thinking. I would like to get a general sense of the rewards structure so that it’s not far-fetched and will encourage engagement but I need to remember to stick to my central motivation for this app in the first place.
As I write this, I am actually feeling better and better about walking away from this rewards idea. It almost feels like a huge weight is being lifted off my back. I can now go back to the exact demographic I had walked away from when I made this donation reward structure. Donations are a no-no in the education world. Too much red tape, too many X-factors when mixing together politics, schools, partisan beliefs and parents. Because the users and teachers I tested this donation idea with liked it a lot, I walked away from my original idea of high school civics or U.S. history class as a launching pad for my app. I walked away from the very soul of my thesis:
Provide an early civic intervention for kids right before they are able to vote, so that they are empowered with the knowledge of WHY rather than HOW to vote.
Guess what? I’m feeling pretty good about this now.
I know. I’m worrying way too much about this stupid rewards structure but just one more thing…Now I am thinking how to make the rewards more down-to-earth, more feasible so that the idea will work regardless of the rewards system. Perhaps I go back to an early idea of electoral votes. Get 270 and you basically swing the direction of the country to whichever party you align with. Blue or Red.
OK enough about rewards for chrissakes
A nagging worry I have about my app was made apparent in my 7 minute presentation. In showing a prototype to an audience, especially a quiz based one, it can feel like watching paint dry if I demonstrate the flows linearly, which also may be a problem with the app itself.
I need to make the content of my app more diverse. I need to start injecting alignment cues into the quiz so that there is a sense of purpose for the user rather than just quiz after quiz, fact after fact. One way to do so may be in the form of polls like that may help you understand which party you align with :
Focus on making the app more action and alignment oriented. Presently the app is meant to be comprehensive and slow burning, more of a bearish outlook on politics than a bullish one. Learning takes time. It’s not a wham-bam thank you ma’am sort of experience like most political apps out there. This was a calculated move after months of research and consideration and user testing. But is it too idealistic to expect people to tune in to my product? That’s why I added the intrinsic reward of donations into the equation. Directly and positively impacting issues you care about through learning. But I need to determine (fairly soon), where is the fine line between an app experience that is too long and discourages return engagement and one that is short but doesn’t result in any real knowledge gained? This is something I’ve been struggling with the last few months. Civics outside of the big attention-grabbing headlines is not inherently exciting to young people, not to mention older people. But there must be a way, with a little more design thinking, to make a boring topic more palatable.
And so I think to make sure the latter product presentation portion of my pitch is as captivating as the former problem/process portion, I need to really strategize how I break down the app to its most essential parts. Yes, in real life, you would go through a flow of quiz questions and then facts with some other diversified content thrown in. Doing this straight up is not good presentation theater so I need to consider this.
Next steps: Shift my focus to a simpler more feasible rewards system and diversify my quiz content so that the experience is richer and less formulaic. I will clean up my visual language a bit and tighten up my presentation once I nail down my prototype.
I can see it…
