Design for Services Project 02
Joeseph Hines | Lily Kim | Ulu Mills | Monica Huang
Week 01 — Getting Started
Session 01
This week, our team made up of Lily, Monica, Ulu, and I set off to get to know each other a bit more and start to identify opportunities for music services that aligned with our interests. Throughout this conversation, we discussed several precedents, themes, and topics that we found interesting, making a note of them on post-its as we went along. With these in hand, we started a sorting exercise to identify potential groupings or themes that would serve as areas we could potentially dive deeper into through exploratory research.
These groupings included:
01. Patterns- How might a music service adapt to patterns or activities found throughout daily life?
02. Culture- How might a music service help explore different cultures?
03. Access- How might a music service provide access to lessons or instruction?
04. Inclusivity- How might a music service engage other senses to provide a more inclusive experience to all users?
05. Environments- How might a might a music service make use of physical environments?
With these in mind, we set off to start our exploratory research through secondary research on these themes.
Session 02. Finding Opportunities
Ulu, Monica and I began this session by presenting some of our initial findings to the group. Out of this conversation, we were able to narrow our research scope by identifying environments as likely just a touchpoint rather than the main driver of our service. Secondly, we discussed that accessibility and inclusivity, although we strongly agree that these will be major considerations moving forward, it may not be the primary driver of the service itself.
One area of opportunity that we are considering exists within the overlap between the culture and patterns themes. More specifically, how might a service help you explore a culture or help you assimilate through music? In this instance, a music service may be able to help you explore a city, find shows or perhaps adapt to your mood or help you retell stories of your experiences later in life through music. Moving forward we are going to dig a bit deeper into this subject for Tuesday’s class session through additional secondary research.
Week 02 — Roots and Seeds
Session 03. Choosing a Direction
This week, set off to start our exploratory research through secondary research on these theme. Our team regrouped to further brainstorm our categories and start narrowing down our direction. From week one, we proceeded with our brainstorming session around the theme of using music to explore cultures.
We approached it from two categories looking at connecting to cultural roots, or expanding interests by planting seeds. These provided a guideline for us to ideate on potential topics of interest under the categories.
Session 04. Team Work-session
We narrowed down to three topics we all were invested in and wanted to explore as potential projects. One was a service to increase engagement with music genres that are struggling or falling out of fashion with a younger audience such as jazz, classical, opera etc. The second one we explored was how might we use a music service to lower the barrier for language learning. Lastly, we briefly explore the idea of using a music service to share messages and hold meaning conversation for activists.
Coming back from Spring break, we have decided to move forward with our engagement with struggling music genres. We are planning to build out a list of references that we speak to in interviews to build out our problem space.
Potential Brief —
- How might a music service increase engagement with music genres that are struggling or have recently fallen out of fashion. (Recent peak in older generation)
- These genres include have rich history: Opera, Classical Music, Jazz, blues, Performing arts. (Expansion: improv comedy)
What the service might provide?
- Make these genres more accessible.
- Opportunity to connect these genres with users interests and tastes.
- Get people to live shows and reinvigorate these communities
Week 03 — Defining Stakeholders and Scenarios
Research
Notes: Brief Introduction + Call for Responses
Notes: Responses From NPR Listeners
Notes: Classical music only streaming service STARTED AT CMU focused on delivering high quality /lossless classical music
Session 05. In class Work-session
Continuing on the question: How might a music service increase engagement with music genres that are struggling or have recently fallen out of fashion. Genres inclueded Opera, Classical Music, Jazz, Blues, Performing arts
Joe, Ulu, Lily, and I brainstormed on two main topics:
Who are the possible stakeholders in the designed service?
What are the ideal outcomes of the designed service?
Feedback Discussion
- Focus on one kind of genres
- What does it mean when we speak about helping users to have deeper cultural understanding of the genres
- Existing service includes: fundraising, encourage audience to interact with performers (ex) inviting audience to be on stage
- Think about what is happening when we want user to have the engagement and excitement about Opera
- Are we creating a service that build up closer relationships between the audience and performers?
- Could our service be a platform of some sort of date night?
- How do we get the concert tickets in someone’s hand?
- How do we consider the lasting in money
- Talk to Steven Neely (how Opera concerts works & people’s engagement in Opera )
Session 06. Team Work-session
We timed ourselves for a 5 minutes brainstorm session, coming up with as many possible scenarios. Then, further disscussed details of each scenarios and made connections between them.
We catagorized similar scenarios into four main services:
- Outreach
- Matchmaking
- Sing It (character recognition)
- Cultural District Lottery
Then we storyboard each scenarios in details.
Session 07. Speed Dating
Here we had a speed-dating session with another team. We shared, discussed, and critiqued on scenarios each group came up with.
How might a music service increase engagement with music genres that are struggling or have recently fallen out of fashion, like that of opera?
Feedback
- Consider the people who needs to be involved — watch and interact with kids
- Interesting point — planting the seeds within kids when they are in early age
- What is the connection between kids attending the opera and kids putting up a opera show?
- Example to see — Kappa, partnering with theater
- Is this service in need? Interview with the people in the opera field
Feedback
- How to bridge the gap between step 1 and 2?
- How do we access the data?
- How do the matchmaking works when suggesting. Is the prompt based on user’s mood?
- Think about how artists talk about who/what other music genres influence them
- “The gateway opera”: which operas are more approachable to others?
- Creating the context in which someone would make the leap is important (parallel universe and context creativity)
- How you get into music: stumbling upon it, or some compelling case through friends
Feedback
- If you could use my singing qualities, and direct me to an artist with my qualities is attractive
- What if you’re self-conscious about your voice? Do you have to share it?
- What other artifacts can be shareable?
- How do we long-term engage our users with the designed aria-matching activity?
- Think about the raw vs refined elements of opera music
- What is the range and scale the opera music match (couple of most popular opera music?)
- How do we engage user and encourage sharing user’s matching result?
- What if aria-matching scenario is a group activity?
Feedback
- Games are always fun!
- If I’m a tourist, I would take this chance
- Disparity between the whimsy of the lottery play and the resulting experience (commitment does not match the received result)
- Installing the machines might make it hard to recoup costs
- Mystery music of the month club?
- Potentially a good advertising campaign
- Is this scenario about gamifying probability of getting good seats at concert/show?
- The lottery/vending machine is a strong/attractive idea
- This idea is similar to the idea of braodway tickets sale in last minute
- Is this scenario about creating mystery and advanture for users?
- Monthly text system may help to have more structure in the system
- This lottery machine could be part of other scenarios
- Best of the Burgh lottery machine
Session 08. Team Work-session
This session we disscussed the feedback we got from last session and iterated senarios in details. Also, we discussed about the major touch points that attract people to opera live performances.
Moving forward: we are going to send out survey questions to people about their experience with live music performances and email questions to the opera companies that Ulu has connections with.
Week 4 — Analyzing Research + Refining Scenarios
Session 09. Team Work-session
In our Monday session, we built out more robust scenarios, attempting to incorporate feedback from the speed dating session. We decided to set aside our first scenario, deciding that our upcoming stakeholder interview with Andrea Walters, Director of Education and Community Programs at the Santa Fe Opera, would be enlightening.
We also solidified our surveys and sent them out. So far 19 responses! Surprisingly, a large number of people have been to an opera, highlighting continued engagement as a potential area of exploration. Monica mentioned that she frequently gets phone calls after seeing a show at the Met in New York, and that it’s not a very effective strategy. How might we promote continued engagement in a way that stimulates the user in a meaningful way?
Session 10. Simon King Lecture
In class, we listened to Simon King discuss prototyping for services. Some points that stood out with relation to our project:
- He emphasized the point that “great services have a point of view.”
- “How can you design something that enables a person to create a great experience for another person?”
- Designing a human role was an interesting consideration, but in the Q+A he highlighted what makes people comfortable when interacting with a touchpoint: just enough support. Not overtly trying to sell anything, and not an expert. This can be translated to non-human touchpoints for sure.
- Design with boundary tensions! In prototyping, we should be able to take certain aspects of an idea to their extremeties.
Session 11. Team Meeting
We set up a meeting time with Andrea Walters, Director of Education and Community Programs at the Santa Fe Opera. Next week, we’ll chat with her to get a sense of current outreach efforts at a large, well-known opera company, which is sure to have its own unique challenges.
We also prepared our WIP presentation, making an effort to highlight the main opportunities and drawbacks of our current scenarios.
Session 12. Work in Progress Presentations
We presented our current states with our classmates. Our classmates’ services:
- VR concert experiences for bedridden/homebound patients (aimed at end-of-life care)
- Local music & history subscription box
- Music-based sleep aid & consultation
- Look book (“sound book”?) creation & song selection for brands
- Sister cities → A musician’s Airbnb(?) → Self-promotion virtual support for independent musicians
- Building a local musician’s network & bandmate matchmaking
- Using music to teach cooking
- Hot Mass → continued engagement following music festivals
Tips from Molly & Daphne
- “We are a service that…” Consider the value exchange throughout the iterative process.
- Talk to LOCAL places!
- Pittsburgh Opera: Christian Cox, Dir. Marketing (contacted by email)
- Consider a website instead of an app —less initial commitment!
Takeaways from other presentations:
- Include a brief synthesis of research & visuals for value exchange
- Generate robust scenarios for certain feature sets
- “Who are we serving?”
- Have we done a competitive analysis? Maybe this will come after talking to opera execs.
- THINK LOCAL. Reach out to local institutions.
Week 5— Value Flow & Service Blueprinting
Based on our feedback from the “work in progress” presentation, this week was largely focused on speaking directly with stakeholders and those familiar with the day to day operations and engagement efforts of performing arts organizations.
Session 13. Check in with Daphne
We met with Daphne to discuss the feedback from our work in progress presentation and talk about next steps. We reintroduced our two concepts and discussed how we should approach narrowing the scope down into one unified service. Ultimately, the discussion came down to identifying which scheme offers the most convincing value exchange. Although as a team we all were fond of the playful interactions that exist within the “matchmaking” concept, we decided that the “lottery” scenario would translate better into a service. With that said, over the course of the next few days we have several stakeholder interviews planned which we hope will help bring further clarity to the project.
Session 14. Interview with Stephen Neely
In order to get a better sense of the issues facing the performing arts organizations within Pittsburgh we spoke with the School of Design’s own Stephen Neely. Stephen has been actively engaged with the Pittsburgh Opera for many years and was able to shed light on the organization’s on going efforts and approach towards increasing engagement.
“Within nearly every arts organization, increasing engagement is an issue.”
This conversation left us with valuable insights which ultimately helped narrow our focus into one cohesive concept. Some of the key take aways from our conversation included:
- The performing arts are in flux and are many of these institutions are uncertain about the future that lies ahead. Will the millennials support these organizations like the generations that came before them?
- Many of these institutions are making attempts to make the performing arts more approachable, especially opera. Some of these efforts include brownbag lunch performances, the “night caps” event series, and the parlor series.
- That said, the ultimate goal is to bring audiences to the larger 2000+ seat performances that sustain the opera here in Pittsburgh.
- Newer opera companies are more open to new models, yet institutions like the Pittsburgh Opera may be less so.
- One major question is how can the Pittsburgh performing arts institutions bring in programming that resonates with the community? It is difficult to find a balance between the staple programing that sustains existing audiences and newer productions which may reach newer and different crowds.
- Are there other ways that we can define engagement that could eventually lead to more people in seats in the house? These are the kinds of questions that production houses across the country are asking.
- Think about coachella and other big festivals. What are they actually selling? It is likely that it is more than just a concert. What else is going on in those festivals that drive the interest?
- Try not to fix the existing model, but maybe you measure engagement by new metrics. Getting people to pay attention, be near, notice, be around.
Session 15. Interview with the Santa Fe Opera
To continue to learn more from our stakeholders, we spoke with Andrea Walters the Director of Education and Community Programs at the Santa Fe Opera, and Brandon Neal the Education and Community Programs Administrative Coordinator. With this in mind, we aimed to focus the conversation primarily on how organizations like the Santa Fe Opera define and pursue engagement.
There was a great deal to be gained from this interview however the three insights which stood out the most were:
01. “The challenges we face attracting new audiences tend to be the same challenges for all audiences.”
02. “We need to get to a place where the people on the stage and behind the stage reflect the communities they are within”
03. “ It is essential that we are going into communities and digging out their needs so we can outline our program. If we are not creating programing that resonates with the general public then we have failed. We have to be cognisent about what is actually going on in the community around us.”
As we continue to develop our service, this notion of being able to identify what resonates with the community will be an important consideration. Especially when you consider the role that data will plan when mapping out the opportunities for value exchange. With this in mind, we outlined a new service scenario (shown above) that we intend to build upon during our service blueprinting exercise.
Session 16. Defining our Service
Spectacle is a service that offers packaged experiences that make the performing arts more approachable unlike TKTS, which is a service that provides discounted, just time in time tickets.
Scoping
During today’s class session we continued to define what our service is aiming to provide. After our conversations over the course of the week, we have decided that due to the relatively limited number of opera performances that take place within a given year (4 Operas w/ four shows each) we would like our service to engage with the entire cultural district. Allowing our service to provide packaged experiences to not only Opera performances, but the symphony, ballet, theatre, jazz + blues shows as well. We still intend on using opera as our window into the performing arts here within the city, but we also intend on also reaching out the Pittsburgh Cultural trust to get a better sense of the larger community.
Value
To address the issue of defining programming that resonates with communities we think there is potential to give data back to the performing arts organizations so that they can make informed decisions. We envision that for users to enter into the service, they must provide information about their interests, desired mood (romantic, etc..), the makeup of group (couple, friends, colleagues, etc…) demographics. Additionally, after an experience is complete users can provide ratings and reviews. Data from both of these touch points can potentially provide valuable data that can give the performing arts organizations a better understanding of how well their programming resonated with audiences
Next Steps
With this in mind, we are looking to complete the first pass at a cohesive service blueprint and begin to identify which touch points we would like to develop further over the course of the next few weeks.
Session 17. Interview with the Pittsburgh Opera
To get a better sense of a Pittsburgh based institution’s approach to engagement and building an arts community, we spoke with Christian Cox, the Director of Marketing and Communications at the Pittsburgh Opera. The outcomes of that conversation can be found below.
What is the Pittsburgh Opera’s relationship with Cultural Trust?
Pittsburgh opera is one of six member organizations that banded together in common interest. They are their organization that puts on their shows within the cultural districts (geographical distinction). The Pittsburgh Opera is a production company that puts on shows within the venues that are owned by cultural trusts.
One thing to note is that all use of the member organizations uses the same 3rd party ticketing platforms, share licenses, IT support, health insurance and even all of the programming books are printed under a single shared contract. This is largely because of economies of scale and collective negotiating power.
Do you know the makeup of your audiences? And if so how do you collect that information?
Simply by redemption seeing which discount codes people use during a transaction leads gives us some information. We will also share email metrics across different organizations and theaters this will give us insights into click-through data and referral sources via google analytics.
Regarding our audiences we have detailed information about that from the shared consortium (cultural trust + partners). We work with a third party, Elliott Marketing Group (direct mail, data-mining) to send out physical postcards to people who are more likely to attend. Additionally, we know the names and address of those who buy tickets, but we are also able to access information about customers of other organizations and generate crossover scores to see if they are likely to go to an opera performances. However, it is important to note that customer privacy is a primary consideration, so we never see any confidential information.
You mentioned that “We want operas that resonate with our audiences?” How do you gauge whether or not something resonates?
The easiest metric is to see how well it sold. If it was more popular, then it likely resonated with audiences. That said, this is something we are always trying to answer but can’t predict accurately.
We do elicit surveys for feedback and receive a few hundred responses per large performance. Asking audiences to rate different criteria about the experience from 1–10.
We also monitor social media and look at when people post videos, pictures, or comments to see what audiences are saying. To try and determine the overall social media “sentiment.”
How do you define engagement?
For us, engagement is a patrons involvement with our organization. Engagement could mean attending a performance, interact with us on social media, coming to one of our free events or donate.
Any or all would be considered engagement. Ultimately, interacting with us or talking about us with other people, even just a tag on social media is a form of promotion and we consider that as engagement.
Session 18. Service Blueprinting
After wrapping up our interview with Christian, we took a moment to continue to develop our service blueprint. We were able to identify the most important touchpoints within the service and bring some clarity defining what supporting processes needed to be in place to support them. With that in mind, we identified which touch points we are looking to design as we move forward into the next few weeks. They include:
01. Elements of the pop up performace
02. The Spectacle web app
03. The Invitation (Physical + Digital)
We feel that these touchpoints are representative of the core moments within the service and offer the opportunity to design both physical and digital experiences.
After developing this initial blueprint, we discussed how we should approach addressing the overlapping/redundant touch points. For instance, the popup experience is largely an awareness tool. However, we envision a physical version of the web app (perhaps a kiosk?) where users can go through the match making the experience at the popup, whereas a return user could interface directly with a web app to engage with the service. Folding this conversation into the service blueprint will continue to happen over the course over the next few days. However, a work in progress sketch can be seen below.
Week 6— Refining the Service Blueprint + Prototyping
Session 19. Revising the Service Blueprint
When we regrouped on Tuesday, we realized that we were getting caught in the channels of the blueprint. We spent time during class adding scenarios to clarify the differences between our physical and digital touch points.
Questions for Guest Speaker:
Hearing that the guest speaker was part of the cultural trust, we wanted to ask “ How does the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust reach out to new audiences?” “ How do people(artists/performers/organizations) get connected to the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust?” “ How do they utilize the services of the organization?”
To Do List for the EOW:
- finish up the blueprint
- value print
- user flow
- wireframe
- reach out to Christian Cox of the cultural trust
Session 20. Guest Lecturer Scott Hershberger
Scott — works for Visit Pittsburgh a non profit organization. Goal is to bring people into the city of Pittsburgh. Books itineraries for large/small groups, make Pittsburgh a place that people want to come back to, feel welcome in.
Kinds of tours
- Pittsburgh Tours — education, medicine/healthcare, technology/robotics, sustainability, sports, craft beer tours, history, arts (cultural trust)
- Destination Services — plan itineraries for conferences/conventions (photographers, DJs, tour buses etc.)
Music City initiative
Citywide initiatives trying to give voice to the artists living in Pittsburgh.
“ We are not going to be Nashville or Austin, but we have great venues and great musicians in this city. How can we take advantage of this?”
Incentives —
Survey Results- fewer than half of visitors responded favorably to Pittsburgh’s music scenes
Rich History -Stephen Foster, Hill District, Jazz, Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller
Living Wages- aspiring and professional musicians cant make enough money. Pittsburgh has great musicians, graduates — we lose them if they can’t stay in Pittsburgh due to wages
Nightlife- adds to vibrancy, enhances the experiences, benefits businesses. Because of the arts scene and the supporting restaurants around it, its made Pittsburgh downtown a great destination
Advantages- old architecture, walkable cities, high density, talented musicians and great venues
How do people(artists/performers/organizations) get connected to the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust?
— we try to make it as easy as possible. There is a person approving for mailers etc. Theres a form people can fill in with photos, and basic who/what/where/when and submit it.
Building relationships between partners and the city
“You have to promote all but feature some. We are not going to pretend something doesn’t exist if it is not a partner.”
4.13 Workday
first passes on value flow and beginning to digitize the service blue print
Paper Prototyping Session:
building out our initial wireframes and flow, we are considering questions such as :
- How comfortable are people with sharing certain information? How does that relate to critical information we need to collect to make our product run smoothly?
- How much transparency should we provide over how the packages are coming together?
Week 7—User Testing | Finalize Service Blueprint and Value Flow | Refine Service Web App
Session 21. Plan out agenda for next few weeks & discussion|feedback on the Spectacle service
Feedback from Molly and Daphne:
Re think about the kiosk touchpoint.
— If it is a person, instead of a kiosk as first touchpoint with users
— what would that person be like?
— how do they do this outreach?
— what do they need to bring? (is the person an opera student? opera professionals?)
— Is the person wearing a costume to attract people’s attention?
About user’s first touchpoint with the service at the night market.
— It is an environmental touchpoint
— who are involve in the environment? portable projector, good speakers, opera enthusiast?
Spectacle service name is interesting — it feels whimsical, dramatic exaggerate.
Session 22. Phone interview with Derek Scalzott — Festival Marketing Director of Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
What does Cultural Trust do?
We see Cultural Trust as an arts enabler. Pooling of resources between employees of the trust and associated arts organization.
- Presenting visual/performance arts directly, like working with Pittsburgh dance council, Children theatre series, Cabaret series, Jazz series, millennial arts series, and handful of galleries that they own and operate
- present free affordable arts events within the community.
- Real estate component, owns and operates multiple properties ranging from benedum to comedy theatre.
- Other initiative include buying and holding real estate properties to serve as incubator for potential arts project
- Goal is to turn the red light/seedy district to a cultural/arts destination ( 14 block cultural arts district downtown)
- Activities in the district include:Arcade comedy theatre, Benedum, Theatre square, Box office, August Wilson Center
- Buying and holding real estate properties: incubate for arts and entertainment purposes
How often do you launch new festivals?
Three rivers music and arts festival is the largest of these events. 10 day music and arts festivals. 12–9pm hundreds of events ranging from performance to visual arts. Just about anything arts related. “The nation’s premier free music and arts festivals” 59th annual festival, produced by the trust since 2009.
How do you engage with community?
“it can be a real challenge to collect data and continue direct conversation with attendees ”
- We conduct surveys, and try to capture email address through our website and in person. But ultimately we are only getting to know
- Guest experience “ what they enjoyed the most, what they didn’t
- Demographics & Economic data ( did they stay at a hotel, how much did they spend on food)
How does it affect future festivals?
- Results get circulated to programing team
- Subsequent events aim to address that
- Economics/demographics — fundraising team, corporate sponsors, potential customers etc.
- Customer service
How do you define engagement?
Any interactions with the institutions, and this could be as simple as watching or sharing a video on social media. Attending one of our events.
It is important for stability and survival to engage with both new and existing audiences.
“We partner with restaurants to provide deals for subscribers. Purst considers the evening as a hole starting from when they park their car going to the theatre and then even consider what people want to do after
Especially We think alot about this especially as we go into the future. What is the experience of going to the district as a whole.”
What is the relationship with the cultural trust and the greater arts community?
- We are confined typically to the 14 block cultural district, although we do loosely engage with them.
- Corporations — good community members/stewards
- Foundations — support huge amounts of cultural trust efforts
- Patrons? — restaurants make deals for subscribers to getting discounts from here and there. (Late night coffee shops, bar/ restaurant, live music venue)
- “ we’re in the process to turn a empty building into a five screen movie theatre”
“ We are considering the evening as a hole starting from when they park their car going to the theatre and then even consider what people want to do after,
Especially We think alot about this especially as we go into the future. What is the experience of going to the district as a whole.”
What are you hoping to capture?
- Guest experience is primary
- What they liked or didn’t like?
- Would they return
- Census like data, are we missing a representation
- Optional economic data, did you stay at a hotel, spend x,y,z at restaurants?
What do you do with these insights?
Many of them go directly to our programing team, especially feeling towards artists/ offerings?
Economic info may go to development team, to look at potential customers + help find sponsorship really
Session 23. User Testing
In this user testing session, first, Joe takes the users on a Spectacle service journey verbally and visually with wireframe sketches. Then, we listen to the users’ feedback on their experience and have discussion, follow up questions with the users.
User’s respond:
User 1 —
Trust depends on the algorithm “ how tailored is it to me exactly”? (This matching service reminds me of Buzzfeed quizes )
“ I don’t love mysteries, I would like knowing exactly what I am getting”
Other than bar type events provided, are there other kinds of events one can go to after a music show? like Ice cream place, coffee shop, museum, park
I’m willing to spend a range of money, but I want to know what I get to be able to weight out how much I pay and what package I’m getting
Meal- vegetarian, need to know what i can eat at the restaurant
Is there a set time for my restaurant/ bar package reservation? Can I only use the reservation/coupon at specific times? What happens when i’m running late, do I get a vouture for another night?
A: You can rearrange going to bar/restaurant before or after your music show, and you will be able to delete or add new events reservations
Is the algoritym based on location, and picking events that are close to each other? How does the transportation work in this service?
If it is late like 10pm after the music show, i wouldn’t want to go anywhere else after
If i see two out of three, then i would feel sure, good
I would be nervous if i don’t know what’s going on. I need to know date, time, location, topic of event, and duration.
I like the new experience situation. I assume the service provide the events cheaper than I book the events myself.
User 2 —
I like the minimizing onboarding experience — quick one handed yes & no experience.
Love maps, visualize my experience
— I would like to know which location of the city I am at (Maybe at the initial filter?)
— I wanna see the people illustrated out on the app
Not just yes or no, neither options could be add on when using the filters?
I like pairings here, prefix menu, things going together is interesting
Generate different combinations?
Like to see ratings, ppl have gone on this journey in this package
Selling point — selling combination of activities.
Particular kind of customer likes new mystery, randomization (mentality of the users could be: user is paying but kind of scared what one’s going get)
How to justify the pricing in this randomization
Don’t like the idea of buying something not knowing what i’m getting
“Reveal is the moment of relief for me”
Hope the feeling is not “oh no, i’m stuck”
I like customization, i would like to extend my evening, choosing more
When to reveal payment?
Are there discount on what i’m getting?
“I would appreciate if it gives me priority/ VIP feeling, make it feel exclusive, high end, intrinsic value beyond discount”
Users might be willing to pay more for convenience. Selling point could be Spectacle piece together of all events in the evening. Deal with all just with one click — “Saving time beyond doing personal yelp searches”
“ legitimacy of the information” (people reviews, partnership, yelp, google)
Getting the deals (two tiers of pricing?)
Invitation feels extra. If i’m using myself, i wouldn’t care. If with another person, maybe it’s neat.
I like physical invitation (boarding pass sounds cool)
What is the transaction between the backend of the restaurant?
Look into existing coupon experience (ex)Yelp
Bar code? How do they verify with you?
— Notification, reminder are important. Syncing current digital environment. Sync with phone number? Text top, things within app I ignore
Session 24. Group update on in-progress prototypes
Here, we presented to each other updated web app wireframe and visual language, service blueprint, and value flow. We gave each other feedbacks to move forward and create higher fidelity work.
Week 8 — Refine, Refine, Refine
Session 24. Planning for Check-in
We discussed talking points for tomorrow’s meeting with Molly and Daphne. We realized that we haven’t had much opportunity to talk through our service in depth, and that we wanted to show how we were validating our decisions through research. Some of the key points we planned to highlight:
Our target users are people who are reluctant to participate in local cultural arts offerings due to false preconceptions, or out of hesitation to invest. Feedback from many of the arts organizations we spoke to indicated that this is the primary barrier to new audiences.
To best serve these users, we’ve worked with certain imperatives that have driven decisions behind the design of the service.
- Establishing personal relevance first as the reason for how the experience is built
- Encourage a sense of whimsy and curiosity
- Being transparent about reasons behind matching to help the image of cultural arts be more approachable to the user
- Facilitate the transfer of user insights to relevant organizations to inform future offerings
Our blueprint is a little unorthodox in that “use” is ahead of “join.” Our hope is that users by engaging with our service in a meaningful way, they will be intrigued enough to experience its full breadth. The hope here is to address commitment aversion to the new. User tests confirmed that this would be a barrier to using such a service, so we want to provide delight and rationale to motivate the user to commit.
Participation in community festivals is the first touchpoint. We first introduce our target users to Spectacle at locally organized festivals and street events. Users get a glimpse into what they would receive from the service by answering a few questions that trigger an interactive display to provide a personalized preview of an experience. Our interview with Christian Cox indicated that the Pittsburgh Opera often participates in crossover events put on by other arts organizations, but has yet to maintain a presence in community festivals. They cite a lack of staffing and funding, but consider it a major opportunity for spreading awareness. We hypothesize that festival-goers would be likely early users of our service.
Users answer a series of metaphorical preference questions that inform how their package is built. This interaction is designed like a rapid-fire personality quiz, and provides rationale for the package that’s developed. They then get an explanation of how their package was formed, and then can choose to reveal *most* of their package, or keep it a mystery. User test shows that while some people were receptive to a mysterious evening, many are risk averse, but appreciate the utility of Spectacle. We wanted to cater to both types of users.
We’ll have an invitation that is hopefully just as delightful. Users can elect to receive the invitation to their Spectacle experience, either digitally, or if they want to make it feel more special, by mail! The invitation contains their itinerary, and grants them access to every part of their package. It displays the same scannable code that the app does, and has perforated doors that can be opened to reveal each stage of the evening.
This is what we hope to demonstrate through our value flow: To users, Spectacle offers confidence to invest in new experiences, facilitated by convenience and personal relevance.
Tor arts organizations, Spectacle offers access to a new revenue stream in the form of new audiences, and a reliable source of feedback to better inform future offerings.
Session 25. Feedback Session
After class session where we successfully communicated the key features of our service, and followed it with a session to discuss next steps.
Request in-depth feedback for our blueprint and value flow. As novice service designers, we’re still grappling with how granular we need to get.
Refine in-app interactions. Lily had a great idea for the app: since we’re implementing a unique ticket code scanning interface, the scannable code can be built as the user develops their package, and the full code is revealed once the package is ready. She’ll work on incorporating more of the visual identity.
Explore possibilities for the pop-up. Monica did great research about how to make a lightweight popup feel whimsical and immersive, and we’ll discuss those concepts in depth on Thursday.
Storyboard the concept video. Ulu took a first pass at a script for the concept video, and the group gave feedback about how to incorporate the elements we won’t prototype realistically in a way that will invoke a real sense of using the product. She’ll take another pass at it for Thursday, and we’ll storyboard it together.
Watch an opera finally??! Despite the impending deluge of project home stretches over the weekend, we’re hoping to make time to take in the Elixir of Love at the Pittsburgh Opera. This is a great opportunity for filming our concept video, so hopefully we’ll have the script down before we go!
Session 26 & 27. Refine, Refine, Refine
Things are coming together. During class and in a second session afterwards, we fleshed out the touchpoints of our system, and planned for our final presentation.
Presentation
Joe roughed out an outline for us to start organizing our thoughts and rationale for the presentation. It’s skeletal at the moment, but with the research we’ve done, it’s just a matter of populating it.
Popup
We talked through possibilities of integrating all of our ambitions into the popup. We want to incorporate the three offerings of Spectacle, with a fourth panel for an “Instagrammable Moment,” and Joe and Monica got closer to finalizing the mockup.
App Interactions
Lily ran a few ideas by us and kept cracking away at making the interactions playful and whimsical.
Concept Video
I (Ulu) wrote a pretty silly script for our concept video, and after fleshing out the draft storyboard it as a team, will focus on a rough sketch and narration to use as the basis for filming over the weekend.
Sessions 28 & 29. Concept Video Filming
We had a quick working session on Saturday before spending Sunday afternoon running around the strip and filming.
For the sake of including prototypes we don’t plan to build to scale, we split our concept video into two chapters: one in the “planning stage,” where an animated Lily will build her Spectacle package, and one in the “doing stage,” where she goes around town enjoying everything Spectacle has to offer.
Editing starts now! We’ll see how it goes.
Week 9— The Final Push
Session 30. Producing Final Assets
As the final presentation quickly approaches we have been working to make each of our three touch points more concrete. Considering they are operating on scales ranging from environments to a web app we have had to rely on different strategies to convey the information embedded within.
The Popup. Environment
For the popup event we developed a rendering of what the temporary installation could look like. We envisioned the popup being a physical manifestation of the three core elements of a spectacle experience, dining, performance, and entertainment as well as a branded photo opportunity and social media feed for engagement purposes. Additionally we took a moment to design what each panel could potentially look like to give a better understanding of the pop-up experience as a whole.
The Webapp. Interface
To develop the interface further, we pushed for mid/high fidelity mockups of each of the key moments within the web app. Lily in particular, put time into developing a visual and illustration identity that builds over time as users progress through spectacle. This has served as both a consistent element within the web app but also translates directly into the concept video as a way to frame our service through an animation sequence.
The Invitation. Object
Although users have an option to use a digital invitation we have developed a physical paper invitation as well. We feel that a physical invitation convey’s that the evening is somehow special and tailored just to them. We see it as a passport to their evening alleviating the need for separate tickets or reservations. Due to time constraint’s we were unable to build a complete prototype but are using a combination of print tests and digital mockups to convey this information.
Session 30. Building a Cohesive Story
With the touch-points developing at a good pace we also took time this week to develop a consistent narrative that will service as a basis for both our concept video and presentation as a whole. After taking an initial pass we sat down with Molly and Daphne to discuss our direction. The resulting critique prompted us to to refocus our efforts away from talking purely about the moments of our service that we designed, and towards the story about how we got to our final solution.
The Presentation
The presentation will be defined by two sections, the pitch and our story. Within the pitch we are looking to:
/// Part 01. The Pitch
01. Establish the problem
02. Show our concept video
03. Introduce Spectacle
04. Identify stakeholders
05. Current Landscape vs. Spectacle
06. Valueflow
07. The Popup
08. The Web App
09. The physical Invitation
/// Part 02. The Story
01. Defining Moments
02. Research Methods
03. Conversations
04. Outcomes
05. Service Propositions
06. User Testing / Identifying our users
07. Future Considerations
