Introducing Recreation Pods
No-cost lounge space with amenities for all high school students
Introduction
Recreation pods are a lounge area curated with individualized cubicles and an open space with different amenities that is open to all high school students. The journey of recreation pods started from our collective personal experience as students in finding a space to simply relax, work, and hang out with friends. I used to go to a mall and sit at a random spot with my friends so that we could talk and hang out after school. However, hanging out in public spaces in New York City can be dangerous and with social media taking over our lives, negative social encounters are becoming more normalized. Highlighting the hypothesis, my group member, Violet Yu, shared her narrative growing up in NYC, feeling lost of where to go and only having the public library to work at besides her home. It was hard for her to hang out with friends at home because of the presence of other family members.
Based on this narrative and the struggles faced by many NYC students, we decided to create a third space that offers opportunity to form tangible connections among teenagers, while ensuring safety. Since the problem started with the personal struggles experienced by myself and my other group members, especially in high school with heavy workload, we decided to focus on high school students. So the How Might We statement we came up with was: How Might We create opportunities for high schoolers that empower their sense of agency in their use of free time?
In order to specify our mission, we conducted interviews with students in the Metrotech area. Their collective demand was to seek in person opportunities like hanging out with friends and picking up a hobby rather than just being online. However, they were doing so in public spaces that are frequented by other community members, potentially putting their safety at risk: school lobby or walk around school neighborhood, near subway stations. Moreover, one of the interviewees refused to stay in the school area because she wasn’t treated well in school. They seeked for a place to hang out with friends in the community, highlighting the importance of ‘inclusiveness.’
Challenge 1. Target audience and Mission Statement still vague
For the first round of interviews, we primarily focused on high school students in the Metrotech area, yet allowed middle schoolers to participate in our interview as well because we wanted diverse perspectives, especially because it was our first user research. However, we later found out that the issue was more urgent when it came to high schoolers, especially of heavier workload while having limited social and economic resources to exercise their duties as students. Therefore, we narrowed down to:
Target audience: Financially challenged high schoolers who do not have a community
Mission statement: To provide high school students with the opportunity to express their agency in how they spend their free time.
Based on our findings and mission to provide a third space that aligns with our mission statement, we made our first prototypes: two digital floor plans if the space is to be placed indoors and outdoors. With this, we conducted another round of interviews questioning the kinds of supplies high schoolers would like in their own individual third spaces.
Challenge 2: Each person wants to use the space differently
Since everyone has different interests and purposes, they demanded different activities and amenities offered in the third space, meaning more furniture. However, I was able to find that the answers divided into three big categories: Study, Entertainment, and Relax. Therefore, we seeked to come up with a colour coding system for different purpose for our final prototype.
Final Results:
We focused on how we would bring the outdoor space indoors because one of the feedback included the effects of the weather. However, they still demanded exposure to nature. Thus, we changed the solid concrete walls of the cubicles to transparent glass as well as full glass walls. Interviewees criticized the uncomfortable seating options, requesting lounge chair options.
- Navy: Entertainment including speakers, monitor, couch, curtains
- Brown: Relaxing area with different lounge chair options
- Yellow: Study / quiet space with desks and chairs
The image above illustrates how our service would look if it were to be executed in real life, offering a realistic depiction of our pilot program. There will be a security guard for ID check, ensuring safety, along with CCTV cameras. Although each cubicle is designated for a specific purpose, the activities done is up to their choice. Although we do accept walk ins when the cubicle is not booked, online reservation is a priority.
Online Reservation System
Our ‘reserve’ tab first takes the visitor to the cubicle selection page, where they can choose the colour of the cubicle according to the purpose of their visit. The description of what each colour means will be available on the first page when they enter the website.
Second stage in the reservation process takes the user to specify the reason of their visit and their needs. Our aim is to fulfill the interests and foster creativity of financially challenged students. Therefore, not only academic related, but also crafting resources will be offered.
We will use social media as our primary marketing tactic since most members of our target audience are active users. I also predict that the news will spread through word of mouth because students are hyper connected and tend to share information with each other.
Feedback & Next Steps
We plan to locate our pilot model in the Metrotech area or the Brooklyn Public Library and expand as the business progresses. We could incorporate creative touch points such as the tablets with smiley face surveys to measure success and receive feedback. The feedbacks I got from our final presentation have taught me that we lacked the ability to zoom out from the problem. We considered that non-profit organizations would be a good source of funding. However, it would definitely need more support from partnerships, sponsorships, and donations, since our service requires a lot of equipment. I thought that the crucial aspect of acquiring support from corporates or brands would be highlighting the benefits they would gain from doing so.
The benefits our service can offer in the case of it being a non-profit:
- Enhances corporate image: by partnering with Recreation Pods, a non-profit that advocates empowerment of financially challenged high school students, the company demonstrates their commitment to social causes and community welfare.
- Tax benefits: Companies can receive tax deductions for their contribution to non-profits. Tax benefits can significant reduce the company’s taxes, especially for major companies.
- Attracting applicants: Since our target audience is high school students, they are already or soon to look for internships. By providing the corporate’s financial assets or resources to these students, it can be a way of investing in future applicants.
In order to prevent from failing in a competitive co-working space industry, I conducted a market research on WeWork and their failure. The biggest challenge they faced was high operating costs. Unlike WeWork, our mission is to support underprivileged students and promote inclusion. Therefore, it is crucial to license our service as a non-profit organization. Another potential solution to this could be offering space rental options for corporate/school events. While operating on a cost-free model for students, we will require for organizations to pay in order to rent out our space.
Upscaling
If the service was to be expanded, we would implement our pods in other locations around the city, as well as school campuses. Placing individual cubicles would also have great revenue potential. Schools without libraries or independent workspaces would financially benefit from our cubicles because they would not have to build a new space themselves and rather, have these pre-installed pods around their community. However, if they were to be placed in public, we would need to partner with local districts or the NYPD to ensure safety around them, which would cost more money.
Incorporating AI
An interesting extension could be incorporating AI into each cubicle. If voice powered AIs like Alexa or Siri were to be placed in each cubicle and programmed to change the colour of the cubicle, the user would not need to move between cubicles when they want to rest, study, and even nap. In addition, many restaurants in Korea already use robots to serve the dishes, ultimately improving efficiency and customer satisfaction. Therefore, if the cubicles were empty and not colour coded like below, and the user had the option to order a robot to bring the equipments they need, our service will significantly differ from other co-working services, making it riskier yet more innovative than others.
To conclude, through the Service Innovation course, I learned that there are countless ways for different systems to come together and form a service, making it more complicated and harder for success. I learned the importance of not only considering the service itself, but also the community and other businesses as both parties are mutually benefitted. The need for service increases as our society advances and carefully considering the product, the process, and the people, is essential in making the world better.
